real

I suppose to wrap up my whole message in one closing statement : people who deny systematic inequality are braindead and for whatever reason, they were on my mind while reading this article.

In my mind, this is the whole purpose of regulation. A strong governing body can put in restrictions to ensure people follow the relevant standards. Environmental protection agencies, for example, help ensure that people who understand waste are involved in corporate production processes. Regulation around AI implementation and transparency could enforce that people think about these or that it at the very least goes through a proper review process. Think international review boards for academic studies, but applied to the implementation or design of AI.

I’ll be curious what they find out about removing these biases, how do we even define a racist-less model? We have nothing to compare it to

AI ethics is a field which very much exists- there are plenty of ways to measure and define how racist or biased a model is. The comparison groups are typically other demographics… such as in this article, where they compare AAE to standard English.

While it may be obvious to you, most people don’t have the data literacy to understand this, let alone use this information to decide where it can/should be implemented and how to counteract the baked in bias. Unfortunately, as is mentioned in the article, people believe the problem is going away when it is not.

Thank you for engaging 💜

Just because there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism doesn’t mean that we have zero control over what we consume. It’s perfectly fine to hold a viewpoint of trying to minimize harm where you can and when you’re aware of it. Where you draw your lines doesn’t have to be perfect either (after all, we’re human).

My understanding of the word comes from how I’ve seen it used in American culture. I’m not enough of an etymologist or a sociologist to accurately claim where the term itself was first created or how prevalent its various uses are and will gladly defer to others with more expertise. Thank you for sharing the wiki article for those who are unaware of genders outside the binary in different cultures 💜

are both older derogative terms for trans women

wow what a thoughtful reply thank you, you really read that article and brought a lot of good points to the table for us to discuss

Absolutely a possibility. Depends on how often people are using VPNs, whether there’s a distinct difference between political ideology and VPN usage, and the average distance to a VPN exit point. I think it’s fairly safe to assume a similar distribution of VPN usage across political bounds and generally speaking geographically distributed fairly evenly, with perhaps major cities and higher educated areas using VPNs slightly more often but with the exit point also being closer to the true point of access.

To be fair, they also do the same with… well everyone. They like a strict hierarchy with straight white married christian cis men at the top.

Just want to acknowledge the the writing and title choice in the article itself are annoyingly smug, but the data analysis itself I found interesting.

Locking this post down because comments have gotten heated

I do want to point out that social media use may be one of the first of these ‘evils’ to meet actual statistical significance on a large scale. I’ve seen meta-analyses which show an overall positive association with negative outcomes, as well as criticisms and no correlation found, but the sum of those (a meta-analyses of meta-analyses) shows a small positive association with “loneliness, self-esteem, life satisfaction, or self-reported depression, and somewhat stronger links to a thin body ideal and higher social capital.”

I do think this is generally a public health reflection though, in the same way that TV and video games can be public health problems - moderation and healthy interaction/use of course being the important part here. If you spend all day playing video games, your physical health might suffer, but it can be offset by playing games which keep you active or can be offset by doing physical activity. I believe the same can be true of social media, but is a much more complex subject. Managing mental health is a combination of many factors - for some it may simply be about framing how they interact with the platform. For others it may be about limiting screen time. Some individuals may find spending more time with friends off the platform to be enriching.

It’s a complicated subject, as all of the other ‘evils’ have always been, but it is an interesting one because it is one of the first I’ve personally seen where even kids are self-recognizing the harm social media has brought to them. Not only did they invent slang to create social pressures against being constantly online, but they have also started to self-organize and interact with government and local authority (school boards, etc.) to tackle the problem. This kind of self-awareness combined with action being taken at such a young age on this kind of scale is unique to social media - the kids who were watching a bunch of TV and playing video games didn’t start organizing about the harms of it, the harms were a narrative created solely by concerned parents.

probably not, in the same way that your grandma calls a video chat a facetime or your representative might call the internet a series of tubes

AI is the default word for any kind of machine magic now

Absolutely, thank you!

For those that are curious, here’s the exact questions used and the %s by demographic

Generally speaking I’d also fall into the rather play games category, but it really depends on the context. Unfortunately there aren’t too many couch co-op kind of games anymore so if the goal is to spend time with someone playing a video game doesn’t often work great.

Great read! Thank you

oof, big flaw there

Any information humanity has ever preserved in any format is worthless

It’s like this person only just discovered science, lol. Has this person never realized that bias is a thing? There’s a reason we learn to cite our sources, because people need the context of what bias is being shown. Entire civilizations have been erased by people who conquered them, do you really think they didn’t re-write the history of who these people are? Has this person never followed scientific advancement, where people test and validate that results can be reproduced?

Humans are absolutely gonna human. The author is right to realize that a single source holds a lot less factual accuracy than many sources, but it’s catastrophizing to call it worthless and it ignores how additional information can add to or detract from a particular claim- so long as we examine the biases present in the creation of said information resources.

I’ve personally found it’s best to just directly ask questions when people say things that are cruel, come from a place of contempt or otherwise trying to start conflict. “Are you saying x?” but in much clearer words is a great way to get people to reveal their true nature. There is no need to be charitable if you’ve asked them and they don’t back off or they agree with whatever terrible sentiment you just asked whether they held. Generally speaking people who aren’t malicious will not only back off on what they’re saying but they’ll put in extra work to clear up any confusion - if someone doesn’t bother to clear up any confusion around some perceived hate or negativity, it can be a more subtle signal they aren’t acting in good faith.

If they do back off but only as a means to try and bait you (such as refusing to elaborate or by distracting), they’ll invariably continue to push boundaries or make other masked statements. If you stick to that same strategy and you need to ask for clarification three times and they keep pushing in the same direction, I’d say it’s safe to move on at that point.

As an aside - It’s usually much more effective to feel sad for them than it is to be angry or direct. But honestly, it’s better to simply not engage. Most of these folks are hurting in some way, and they’re looking to offload the emotional labor to others, or to quickly feel good about themselves by putting others down. Engaging just reinforces the behavior and frankly just wastes your time, because it’s not about the subject they’re talking about… it’s about managing their emotions.