Re:600k Images Removed from ImageNet After Art Project Expos...
by esyir on Monday September 23, 2019 @10:51PM
(#21056041)
That is most definitely not racist though. Once we go there, we're basically trying to force ourselves to take a worldview that does not accurately represent reality.
If my classifier predicts that an Asian guy would probably eat rice, if it's accurate, is it racist?
The issue I'd have here isn't racism, it's when race dominates other features resulting in, in this case, poor recommendation quality/variety for Asians who prefer non-rice dishes or vice versa.
You won’t hear much about it though because: 1) it’s a sensitive topic that is easily misunderstood by those who aren’t researchers 2) when everyone else is trying to scrub racism out of their models for politically correct reasons, having a “racist” AI can actually produce a competitive advantage in some industries, and it can be a difficult advantage for competitors to get similar performance if they don’t allow for natural racism to emerge.
In short, it’s not a big deal, humans have some amount of racism whether they admit it or not. What matters is that you treat people equally and without prejudice, regardless what you may think of their race. Judgements about a group and judgements about an individual are two different things.
Racist results don’t even need to be about negative things, it could be as simple as “a person of this race prefers this kind of food over that one”