Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by bonoboTP on Thursday December 17, 2020 @09:28AM (#25455819)

She's Eritrean-born and identifies as Black. Races aren't an exact science but social constructs. There's a gradual continuum in people's appearance along geographical areas, linking Sub-Saharan west Africa where most slaves were taken from in the Atlantic slave trade, to East Africa, to North Africa and the Middle East, to the Mediterranean coast, to central Europe to Scandinavia to Siberia to Central Asia to East Asia to Inuits to Native Americans etc. No sharp borders.

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by red75prime on Thursday December 17, 2020 @11:28AM (#25457041)

It doesn't mean that a person cannot genetically belong to a well defined group with little admixture.

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by bonoboTP on Thursday December 17, 2020 @11:35AM (#25457139)

The question is how geographically localized that "well defined group" is. Are Eritreans in the same well defined group as Ghanans or as Lebanese? Are Cypriots the same as Lebanese or Italians? Are Italians in the same well defined group as Greeks or as Germans? Are Germans like Slovaks or like the Sami?

You can surely say that the overlap in a Ghanan and a Sami person's ancestry is quite small regarding recent millennia. But I don't see well defined groups at all. The reason it seems so in the US is because of the huge Western European (German/British) immigration early on and the large population of descendants of West African slaves. These two are sharply distinguishable (discounting for intermixing effects) but there are no "well defined groups" such as "black" and "white" when looking at it globally, not just in America. They are linked continuously via North/East Africans/Arabs/Turks and Mediterraneans.

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by red75prime on Thursday December 17, 2020 @05:44PM (#25461512)

OK. Data for well defined groups here: https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/popstruct.pdf

Advice to not interpret any genetic data in a divisive manner here: http://www.ask-force.org/web/Golden-Rice/Yudell-Taking-Race-...

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by selimthegrim on Sunday December 20, 2020 @05:11PM (#25490015)

This is an old paper. A lot more work has been done on Japanese and on Kalash (see Reich) and the Altaic language family is on the backfoot these days. Reich himself is also very sloppy with attributions about Dravidian language.

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by red75prime on Thursday December 17, 2020 @01:48PM (#25458825)

I've studied a wider range of literature, and I suggest to not discuss this question one way or another. Let's leave genetics to geneticists.

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by bzb6 on Thursday December 17, 2020 @11:45AM (#25457244)

So what, someone being born in Europe does not automatically make them white. It just seems fishy to me. When she’s getting this amount of privilege from “being black”, saying that she identifies as black when she is clearly not black should not be enough.

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by bonoboTP on Thursday December 17, 2020 @11:53AM (#25457351)

Well, seems like other black people recognize her as black too, so I don't know what else can you expect. A person identifies as part of a group and the group agrees.

It's kind of like asking if Obama is really African American/Black. Races aren't sharply divided, it's a social grouping thing based on history, culture, etc.

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by bzb6 on Thursday December 17, 2020 @11:57AM (#25457389)

Blacks of the tech liberal elite consider her black. That’s not representative.

Obama has clear facial features of a black person. This woman does not have them. She even looks like she got a perm just to look more black.

Let’s agree to disagree ;)

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Re:Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it send... by bonoboTP on Thursday December 17, 2020 @12:18PM (#25457631)

Haile Selassie is also quite commonly regarded as having been Black despite not looking like "stereotypically black". Edit: although seemingly he did not self-identify as "negro" (term of the time), but is looked up to as a black emperor by rastas.

Race isn't straightforward.

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