Wait...ignoring a discussion on Twitter is a privilege now? Some people don't have the privilege to do so? Just...put down your phone? I guess that makes me super privileged, seeing as I don't visit that cess pool of a site.

I'm not talking about ignoring the Twitter thread itself, but rather ignoring the issue it discusses. What I was getting at when I used the word "privilege" is that LeCun is not a member of a group which tends to experience negative effects from these kinds of technological tools -- quite the opposite. If you're a member of one of those marginalized groups, as Gebru is, those issues might become a little more interesting to you. For instance, these kinds of issues, https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessm..., https://themarkup.org/locked-out/2020/05/28/access-denied-fa..., https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/race-after-technology

Well, can you help me understand how the conversation was detoured in the first place? I tried to read it, but as mentioned I don't use Twitter so it's confusing to me.

If I read it right...a person posted a photo that turned pixelated Obama, a half white person, into a fully white person.

A person, who I assume is some ML expert, explained that it's because the training set used uses too many white faces.

A person replied very negatively to this answer, saying she's tired of it, that he doesn't listen, and talking about injustices in the world.

I don't think either of them are wrong, I just don't understand the leap. Turning pixelated Obama into some random white guy isn't a social injustice. I kinda felt like both weren't even participating in the same argument.

I think it does mean that other people can't be frustrated with that choice. It's very toxic behavior for me to jump into a conversation and tell people they're bad for not discussing other topics I find more important.

To be fair, LeCun started a discussion around bias in ML -- Gebru's reply is on topic, since statistical bias in ML is a narrow way of understanding the social impact of an algorithm. Gebru is one of the foremost scholars on that issue.