AI systems to detect ‘hate speech’ could have ‘disproportionate negative impact’ on African Americans.

If you’re laughing at the headline, you’re a terrible, terrible person.

A new Cornell University study reveals that some artificial intelligence systems created by universities to identify “prejudice” and “hate speech” online might be racially biased themselves and that their implementation could backfire, leading to the over-policing of minority voices online.

Specifically,

[Researcher, Thomas] Davidson said tweets written in “African American English,” or AAE, may be more likely to be considered offensive “due to […] internal biases.” For example, terms such as nigga and bitch are common hate speech “false positives.” “We need to consider whether the linguistic markers we use to identify potentially abusive language may be associated with language used by members of protected categories,” the study’s conclusion states.

“Human error” and “inadequate training” have been cited as explanations.

Update, via the comments:

Given the volume of research that’s subordinate to the conceit that anything reflecting poorly on a Designated Victim Group must therefore, by definition, be an unconscionable act of bias, it’s refreshing to see that the authors of the study do concede that the effect they denounce is most likely a result of statistical differences in actual behaviour:

Different communities have different speech norms, such that a model suitable for one community may discriminate against another… The ‘n-word’… can be extremely racist or quotidian, depending on the speaker… we should not penalise African-Americans for using [it].

However, the authors seem quaintly mystified by the fact that tweets by black people “are classified as containing sexism almost twice as frequently.” And whether the word bitch and various common synonyms should result in flagging and censure only when used by white people and other, as it were, unprotected categories is left to the imagination.

Also, open thread.

Lifted from the comments: 

It goes without saying chappie is an educator. Also needless to say, our educator chappie has form.

Given the self-satisfied ignorance on display – or malign perversity – I’m guessing Dr Kotsko doesn’t live in a neighbourhood rapidly being enlivened with Congolese and Somali borra gangs, whose social skills, and machetes, are so much in the news here.

Of course, it’s much easier to be dismissive of rapidly changing demographics and to disdain expectations of cultural common ground if your own immediate neighbourhood hasn’t yet been enriched by gangs of machete-wielding sociopaths, or by people butchering animal carcasses in the back garden, or newcomers struggling with the concept of electricity, or getting lively in the name of Islam, or just shitting on your doorstep, as happens in some of the more vibrant areas.

And yes, we’ve been here before.

Douglas Murray on broadcasters, Twitter and public trust: 

If broadcasters still cared about the editorial independence of their employees, then comments like this [aired on Twitter] would not be made by their journalists. For they further reveal what most of the public have come to suspect – that broadcasters presenting themselves as non-partisan in fact hold very clear political views and that these usually veer in a particular direction… Of course, people have always harboured their suspicions, but not until journalists began to freely give away their thoughts on social media was such a smorgasbord of evidence presented…

On one single occasion in recent years has a television presenter let slip a view that did not fall into lockstep with the narrow orthodoxies of the broadcasting class. When Politics Live presenter Andrew Neil sent out one tweet last year mocking the increasingly conspiratorial Observer writer Carole Cadwalladr, he not only deleted the tweet but himself immediately became a news story. There were swift calls for his sacking, and the BBC felt compelled to publicly chastise Neil. As it happens, despite being almost uncontested as the country’s leading political interviewer, Neil no longer has a regular slot on the BBC. 

Bob McManus on the hustles and dishonesties of state education:

“Labour Party. Socialist. Teacher.”

Put another way, “State education is generally sub-optimal and often shockingly bad. Let’s make sure that’s all there is available.”

We’ve been here before, of course. As when we heard the claim, conveniently unchallenged, that doing one’s best for one’s own children – in contravention of “social justice” – is merely a “cultural construction,” and therefore, presumably, ripe for deconstruction. By our betters.

And we’ve been here more than once.

Again, via Darleen in the comments:

It’s as if the movie Inherit the Wind had a different ending.

She’s referring to this intriguing academic development: 

Instructors at a prominent university in Australia have been warned not to lecture on the natural historical record of that country; instead, they should teach a creation narrative regarding the origin of indigenous Australian people. Lecturers at the University of New South Wales “have been warned off making the familiar statement in class that ‘Aboriginal people have been in Australia for 40,000 years’,” The Australian reports. Instead, they should state that “Aborigines have been here ‘since the beginning of the Dreaming/s’ because this ‘reflects the beliefs of many Indigenous Australians that they have always been in Australia, from the beginning of time, and came from the land’.”

It seems we’ve gone from “The aboriginal population is primitive and unable to think rationally about things,” which is a sentiment to be denounced, especially in academia, and progressed to “We must treat the aboriginal population as if it were primitive and unable to think rationally about things.” Which, apparently, is something to be applauded. Especially in academia.