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from the did-you-really-just-call-her-that? dept.
Google Photo tries to categorize your pictures automatically. Until very recently, it had a failure mode in which its classification for some pictures of humans was "Gorillas".
Google reacted [and apologised] very quickly when they got a complaint from a black woman who had been misclassified.
When Brooklyn-based computer programmer Jacky Alcine looked over a set of images that he had uploaded to Google Photos on Sunday, he found that the service had attempted to classify them according to their contents. Google offers this capability as a selling point of its service, boasting that it lets you, “Search by what you remember about a photo, no description needed.” In Alcine’s case, many of those labels were basically accurate: A photograph of an airplane wing had been filed under “Airplanes,” one of two tall buildings under “Skyscrapers,” and so on.
Then there was a picture of Alcine and a friend. They’re both black. And Google had labeled the photo “Gorillas.” On investigation, Alcine found that many more photographs of the pair—and nothing else—had been placed under this literally dehumanizing rubric.
Speculating, it's possible that their software is heavy on statistical matching and it's really hard to debug, which is why they wound up simply deleting "Gorilla" from the list of possible categories.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by m2o2r2g2 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:49AM
Now I know this will come off as insulting, and I really don't want it to be, but...
*TO A COMPUTER* Gorillas have the same humanoid shape as people, and unfortunately the colour of the hair covering on most Gorillas are black. So a person who has darker skin is more likely to fit into that bucket in a primitive image recognition algorithm (matches shape and colour).
This is not Google trying to be racist/insulting, this is just something that highlights how hard that feature is to implement correctly. The people need to take a chill pill and realise this was not a deliberate attack on them. It was a machine that made a mistake. There was no malice involved (as management would not allow the extra engineering time to program malice in).
We are going to run into a lot of these problems as people try to project emotions and intentions onto machines.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday July 01 2015, @06:08AM
This kind of thing is nothing new. Years ago HP was scolded for their face-tracking technology not working with Black people. [gizmodo.com]
Although I can't help but chuckle, because I'm an asshole, this isn't a symptom of racism but rather shoddy design that isn't tested and developed using enough real-life cases. This is also the kind of problem that occurs when you offload your beta-testing onto the public rather than do it yourself.
Somewhat related, there's a lot of fun to be had with Google search's auto-suggestions. For example this, [torontosun.com] this, [aurumahmad.com] and this. [lancs.ac.uk]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:31AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:56PM
Probably they outsourced the software development to a cheap American sweatshop. ;-)
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Wednesday July 01 2015, @06:17AM
*TO A COMPUTER* Gorillas have the same humanoid shape as people
oh SUUUUURE. what are you going to claim next, a computer labeling a donkey as a horse is understandable?!
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday July 01 2015, @06:40AM
The donkey would be quite happy...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 01 2015, @06:52AM
Understandable; wouldn't you feel the same?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Funny) by fritsd on Wednesday July 01 2015, @09:19AM
Did you hear that, Shrek? I'm a *STEED* !!1!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:04PM
*TO A COMPUTER* Gorillas have the same humanoid shape as people
Its actually worse, not just basic shape. There's a classic pix we've all seen but I can't find a link from one of the "save the gorillas in the mist" or whatever fundraising campaigns where they played photo games with cropping and angles and the gorilla looks like a human with a punched nose. You know, to get sympathy and financial donations you're going to use a pix that looks kinda human for PR, not a pix of them taking a dump or something. Not for all gorillas, not all pix of that one gorilla, but there is at least one pix of one gorilla one time, out there with VERY human ratios of eye separation to mouth width, eye separation to eye/mouth distance, gorilla eyes are basically human eyes, human looking mouth, basically a little plastic surgery, some make up, and a touch of photoshopping and that gorilla from that cropped specific angle could pass for a "people of walmart" entrant. It wouldn't take much work. You need the hair just right and the sun just right at just the right angle so you don't notice the brow ridge issues and the nose isn't so prominent, etc etc. The TLDR point I'm trying to make is there exist a subset of pictures of gorilla faces that pass quite well for possibly very bad pictures of human faces.
Or turning it around given the right blackface makeup and really weird lighting conditions to get things just right and give me a weird facial expression to make and do my hair just right, and a very carefully contrived and cropped pix of my head could easily pass for a pix of a somewhat deformed gorilla.
Its like those people that torture their pets by making them wear crazy animal Halloween costumes, no google, my coworkers dog really isn't Thomas the Tank Engine its just a dog wearing the craziest costume you've ever seen under ideal camera conditions. Those people must feed their dogs 50 pound of jerky to get them to tolerate that stuff, dogs are even worse than toddlers WRT that kind of thing.
I suspect a huge amount of the butthurt is creationist / non-evolution types trying to stealthily proclaim they are completely unrelated to lower primates, which is obviously pretty stupid. I don't care how much you claim it offends Jesus, at least some gorillas look like humans and vice versa because "Duh!" we're related, admittedly very distantly. You can act as offended as you want about photographs but the molecular biologists pretty much don't give a shit, we're closely related end of story. I suspect there's -kin people problems too, "well I feel I was born to be a vampire squid and it emotionally offends me when people say I'm biochemically a primate all that matters is how I feel so you have to treat me as if my delusions are real, you must love my tentacles".
Combine the above paragraphs and you got people who win "dog looks like its owner" contests, so considering we're biologically about a bazillion times closer related to gorillas than Shetland Sheepdogs or parrots, there should logically be about a bazillion times more "gorillas and dudes look alike" pix, for factual reasons that are really going to piss off creationist types.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:18PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:31PM
> There was no malice involved (as management would not allow the extra engineering time to program malice in).
Of course there was no malice involved. It is the unconscious assumptions of the developers that get programmed in because management does not allow the extra engineering time to even consider other possibilities. That's something you get for free when your developers aren't a monoculture.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tempest on Wednesday July 01 2015, @01:19PM
software is heavy on statistical matching
I can see how a computer could mistake that for a gorilla, however if we're leveraging statistics I'd say this says more about a poor implementation. There are more pictures, by a few orders of magnitude of black people than of gorillas, so I'd expect the software should be mistaking gorillas for black people not the other way around.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:48PM
"*TO A COMPUTER* Gorillas have the same humanoid shape as people,"
Uhhhh - how about to people as well? Understand that I have never had "normal" vision. Although there are circumstances in which I can see some things better, and quicker than people around me, there are many more circumstances in which I'm the last person to see what everyone else sees. I have been confused by pics of monkeys and apes plenty of times. It depends on how much of the animal or the person you can see, and the posture. Quality of color, contrast, and focus contributes to the potential for confusion.
It's possible that I didn't spend enough time studying my mama's face when I was an infant, but I've seen a fair number of photographs that have confused me, however briefly.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:59PM
Knew the racist angle would be immediately trumpeted. But where are all the offended Creationists? Fact is, all of us look similar to chimps and gorillas for the very good reason that we are closely related. We look much more like chimps than we look like, say, dogs or cats.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:06PM
You don't hear creationists trumpeting in, because we don't care about how you think we look like Gorillas. Why would it be an aberration for God to make an animal that has some features resembling humans? You can think we evolved from apes, but I choose to disagree. There's not much of a discussion here, thanks.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by albert on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:02PM
The comparison wouldn't be offensive if it didn't have some truth to it. We'd just laugh if the label was "starfish" or "ice cream".
Suppose you are comparing noses. Compare one of those wide flat African-style noses with one of those skinny long European-style noses. Which is more likely to be mislabeled as a gorilla nose?
Suppose you are comparing brow ridges. The same applies. Add in the brow ridge of an Australian Aborigine though, and they win the gorilla look-alike contest by far.
Suppose you are comparing eye color. Lots of European natives get a special exemption from the gorilla category.
Suppose you are comparing side face profiles, which wasn't applicable in this case, or slight ridges (sagittal keel) running along the top of the head. The gorilla's lower face projects a bit, the forehead slopes back a bit, and there is that ridge. These features are all somewhat common in Africans, but relatively uncommon in others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:21PM
> The comparison wouldn't be offensive if it didn't have some truth to it.
Are you honestly ignorant of the long history of racial slurs against black people comparing them to apes and gorillas?
Here's one against Michelle Obama. [wistv.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:40PM
"Are you honestly ignorant of the long history of racial slurs"
And, are you honestly ignorant of the fact that people resemble monkeys and apes? Are you honestly ignorant that coloration tends to reinforce the resemblances? You might address the issue, rather than slamming reasonable observations. No one gives a fuck about your sensitive little feelings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:06AM
> And, are you honestly ignorant of the fact that people resemble monkeys and apes?
Which has absolutely nothing to do with why the comparison is 'offensive.'
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:44AM
Better testing might have caught this before it stepped on someone's toes, so an accusation of neglect might fly.