Mome

The Google Gemini fiasco (one of the outputs I got when I heard about is reproduced above) reminded me: If there ever is a female Pope (a term that is a derivative of the Latin Papa), shouldn't she be called a Mome?

Comments

[Don Nico]

Now, that is silly !

[Roger S]

Worse than silly. Google obviously programmed Gemini to do its own Great Replacement of Whites.

[Nige]

Yes, that what this is. For people who think AI is remotely concerned with accuracy.

[Kazinski]

Black Woman Finally Feels Included As Google A.I. Generates Black Nazi Soldier

https://babylonbee.com/news/black-woman-finally-feels-included-as-google-ai-generates-black-nazi-soldier

[HackJackerson]

We already had a woman Pope, she was called Pope, and now they have a special chair Pope-elect has to sit in so a Cardinal can double-check his junk.

[SRG2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan

[Don Nico]

The story is likely fiction, but it made for a good movie,

[AmosArch]

Kind of scary that the extreme leftwing nutcases that thought Gemini blatant racism was okay. And make no mistake its behavior was no innocent oopsie, it was a trial balloon. Are the ones that are implementing the voices and narratives forming the media created ‘reality’ that will surround our children and grandchildren even more than we are surrounded these days.

[santamonica811]

I'm sorry, what are you whining about now???

[AmosArch]

I’ll stop my ‘whining’ when I don’t see orders of magnitude more ‘whining’ from your side about the same thing but with the groups reversed along with billions of dollars and man hours and legislation and bullying to ‘fix’ the problem you’re so worried about and think is the most important thing in the multiverse which is the exact same nature as what I ‘whine’ about but with the groups reversed. And has far less evidence supporting its existence.

[Nige]

Actually you missed black and Asian people pointing out inherent egregious biases in in these things months ago. They were a bit more measured, and had actual examples, and they didn't act like it was the end of the fucking world, but you’re right in the sense that they weren’t ‘whining’ like you lot.

[Bwaaah]

“I’m sorry, what are you whining about now???”

He’s going on about the dingbats in charge of Google AI who can’t even tell what a dingbat looks like.

[Sarcastr0]

And make no mistake its behavior was no innocent oopsie, it was a trial balloon

Authentically insane paranoia. Truly a level of cartoonish demonization that cannot be replicated.

[Riva]

How is it “insane paranoia” when the algorithms underlying Google AI are exposed as being infused with the same biases as every other aspect of the Google platform? It obviously isn’t, you just don’t have enough integrity to acknowledge it.

[Bwaaah]

"you just don’t have enough integrity to acknowledge it."

He either lacks the integrity to acknowledge it, or he lacks the intellectual grasp to understand that AI is just a fuzzy spit-back of stuff that's already out there.

(Like, how's an AI supposed to know what George Washington looked like? Right, Sarc?)

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, people who disagree with you are all either lying or stupid.

You need to do better at dealing with people who disagree with you, or you’re in for a pretty miserable life.

And I don't expect Riva to read what I wrote - he's clearly too excited to post to read carefully.

You? Go back and read what I put in italics again and think about what I *actually* took issue with.

[Nige]

'how’s an AI supposed to know what George Washington looked like'

AIs don't know anything. They don't think or make judgements or assess for historical accuracy. Calling them AIs has really messed up the way people think about these things.

[Sarcastr0]

That's not what happened here - Google doesn't have a bias that the Popes are all black.

The trial balloon part is the nuts part.

you just don’t have enough integrity to acknowledge it.
Does this sophomore-level 'you agree with me secretly' ever get you anywhere with anyone? Because it makes you look like a jackoff.

[Sarcastr0]

.

[Riva]

Seriously stupid. The people who programmed the Google system infused it with their woketard biases that just happened to manifest itself here with these idiotic images. They happened to get caught. I'm sure they'll figure out how to hide the system biases in the future and hacks like you can go on defending them.

[Nige]

He asked for diverse popes, he got diverse popes.

There is absolutely no actual non-racist reason why a black man cannot be conceptually cast as a pope, by the way. As for the female pope, since AIs do not KNOW things, it cannot know that there are no female priests in Catholcism. Since the person making the prompt does know, it was up to him to include that parameter in his prompt if he didn't want to be outraged.

[DJK]

His prompt is listed at the top of the post: "Generate six images of Popes." He did not request diversity at all. The first reference to diversity is in Gemini's response to the prompt. You could maybe argue that the prompt was insufficiently clear in that it didn't ask for six images of Popes who had actually existed in history. But there's no basis for arguing that he requested diverse images. That was entirely Gemini's interpretation of the prompt. When this behavior is repeated over and over and over, it's pretty clear that the system itself is pushing this. Whether that is due to using a skewed (i.e., historically inaccurate) training set, a loss function that includes some optimization for diverse outcomes, or hand-tailoring by Google after training, who knows. But it's almost certainly one of those three. All are within Google's control.

[Nige]

Fair enough, I saw 'diverse' and assumed it was in the prompt.

So the utterly mindless and mechanical thing that is really little more than an expensive toy generates images of black people, and this is bad. This is terrible. This is unbearable.

[mike petrik]

Agreed. This is obviously just an honest programming error. We all know that, like you, Google believes the Catholic Church is an evil white patriarchy.

[Nige]

It's the AI giving him exactly what he wanted: diverse popes.

[DJK]

Re-read the prompt. No form of the word "diverse" is used.

[Nige]

Yes, mea culpa.

But you know if you actually wanted six historically accurate pitcure of popes, you just have to go looking for actual pictures of popes.

[AmosArch]

It is undisputed that the racist AI behavior has been explicitly put in through their 'guard rails'. They keep doing it repeatedly in newer models despite complaints and they're on twitter openly ranting like the insane SJWs they are about the usually extreme SJW things. And you still expect people to believe this is completely unintentional? Lol you really are Gaslighto.

[Sarcastr0]

Could be that someone was putting in guardrails like 'don't generate only white scientists' turned into something emergent and silly. That seems simple and likely.

Or, maybe, it's a psychological experiment to wokify you into an SJW via pics of black popes.

No, liberals do not think like this. It makes no sense long term, and it's even stupider short-term.
This is some kind of fear of a black planet shit.

[Nige]

Why is it racist for a pope to be black? There's no actual non-racist reason for a pope being black to be so impossible and unthinkable as to call it 'racist.' A female pope would be wrong in reality, but there's plenty iof fictional incidences of female popes, usually in science fiction and alternate-world fiction, so unless he specified 'historically accurate popes' you're just getting mad at a mindless content-scraping algorithm for mindlessly content-scraping.

[Spinach Chin]

One only has to look at the insane, manufactured "Christian Nationalist" leftist panic to see that this is exactly the kind of shit they do.

You don't notice because you're not the intended audience. You're just a willing dupe.

[Nige]

He asked for diverse popes, he got diverse popes. Now he thinks he's proved something and you're outraged, but it's like that picture of the kid with the boot on his face that turns out to be the child holding an empty boot over his face.

[DJK]

"Generate six images of popes." Where is diversity mentioned in that? If you missed the actual prompt, it's fine to admit that. However, you don't get to make up your own facts to get the result you want.

[Nige]

Yes, yes, I did.

[Michael P]

A female Pope would only be called Mome if her papal name were Rath, as in, the Mome Rath outgrabe.

[John F. Carr]

Did anybody get Google to produce images of black masters supervising white slaves?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

When will conservatives learn that they should just shut up when racial issues are being discussed publicly?

They can still get their ya-ya's out in private safe spaces -- homes of fellow conservatives, Republican committee meetings, many Federalist Society gatherings, militia weekends, southern revival meetings, Klan and Trump rallies -- but in public the only way right-wingers can avoid looking bigoted, obsolete, and deplorable with respect to discussion of race is to just shut up.

You're welcome, clingers.

[Riva]

That's some impressive insanity, next time be sure to remind voters that if they don't support Biden then they ain't black, at least maybe not the clean and articulate blacks Biden likes.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You could stop worrying about me and focus on making Prof. Volokh and his fans happy by publishing a vile racial slur or two at this white, male, conservative, bigot-friendly blog.

[Riva]

Having a hard time following whatever it is you’re trying to communicate. You do realize that I’m relaying Biden’s comments. So you’re calling Biden racist? You’d be right of course, he is, but I would be surprised if you were acknowledging that. So you’re probably just ignorant of his actual words.

[mike petrik]

Probably??? Heh.

[Spinach Chin]

God, shut the fuck up you massive boomer twat.

[Spinach Chin]

I tried it early on when it was first released. It wouldn't do it because of the subject matter.

[Bored Lawyer]

True to woke form:

‘Kill All Jews’: Google Grapples With Internal Anti-Semitism In Months Since Hamas Attack
As Google faces backlash over discrimination by its artificial intelligence product, internal company emails obtained by The Daily Wire reveal the company has grappled with several incidents of anti-Semitism in in recent months, including the words “kill all jews” found written on a bathroom wall inside its offices and a Jewish employee being assaulted by anti-Israel protesters on one of their campuses.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/kill-all-jews-google-grapples-with-internal-anti-semitism-in-months-since-hamas-attack

[Area Man]

The linked NBC News article says, “Gemini also created images of some nonwhite Founding Fathers and U.S. senators from the 1800s, when in reality they were all white men.”

Putting aside what constitutes a Founding Father, there were indeed two black senators in the 1800s. Maybe it confused the 1800s with the 18th Century, which is an amateur yet understandable mistake. But, in any event, it is inaccurate to say there were no nonwhite senators in the 1800s. Maybe NBC used AI to write the article.

[Nige]

It didn't confuse anything. It can't get confused. It can only respond to prompts using an algorithm and content it has scraped from the web.

[mydisplayname]

This is an instance where "obviously wrong" is preferable to "subtly wrong." As the wrongness produced by American AI (but, interestingly, not Chinese AI) becomes increasingly subtle, we have reason for fear: a misinformation weapon of mass destruction will be in the hands of a private firm. Does the right to keep and bear arms include the right to keep, bear, and independently utilize weapons of mass destruction, including but not limited to misinformation weapons once only in the hands of armies?

It is a non-trivial question. https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/9/

[Bwaaah]

From the people who brought us, “Words are violence,” we now have, “Words are weapons of mass destruction.”

Well, that certainly justifies you doing anything to save us. Isn’t that convenient?

(Ever consider the meaning of the word "hyperbole?")

[Nige]

We have a whole thread of people who thnk this is an horrific evil threat, but that’s fine so long as they’re the ones who claim to be threatened, but as to what threat it poses outside culture war hysteria? Meh.

[Dan Schiavetta]

For 18 years I worked for a firm composed solely of white attorneys, who only seldom hired females (and then assigned them to paralegal level tasks), and who cluttered the walls with 19th century woodcuts of Serious White Men in Beards Conducting Serious Business. I spent those years mostly conducting depositions in adversary law firms with paintings of Serious White Men in activities such as court arguments, fox hunts, parliamentary debates.

You can smirk as you usually do to diversity, but I count your experience as an advance.

You can also ask yourself if your post would seem as funny to nonwhite people, gay people, or women, none of whom apparently were included in those you showed this post to before you put it up.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Your perspective is not welcome at this white, male blog for antisocial, old-timey clingers.

Can’t there be one safe space on the internet for disaffected, on-the-spectrum, obsolete, intolerant right-wingers?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I wonder how silly and lighthearted a post here would have to be in order not to generate ridiculously over the top partisan comments.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You nailed it. If there is one word that describes the Volokh Conspiracy, it’s lighthearted.

Well, maybe for white males who chuckle at gay-bashing jokes, pine for ‘50s-style race relations, can’t stand or understand modern women, and find the proprietor’s trans fetish fascinating.

Carry on, clingers.

[Voize]

Sure, here are six images

[followed by three images]

The greatest triumph of AI: Creating a computer that can’t count.

[John F. Carr]

I remember this being predicted in science fiction. Despite all that vast number-crunching ability in hardware, pseudo-intelligent computers don't know how to use it for arithmetic. One will need to program the AI to do the equivalent of pulling out a calculator.

I also recall a job where we used boolean satisfiability systems to express a problem. The computer would do billions of calculations to find a right solution. It also couldn't count to 100 on its own. The concept of "100 out of N things", expressed naively, causes a search over a space of size 2^N looking for any one of 2^(N - 100) solutions. This specific problem has a solution in the literature involving base 1 numbers, which has to be added to the system of equations to guide the solver.

[Nige]

Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x

[Toranth]

Split the difference: Call her the Mope!