AI presents all white men when asked to generate autistics
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ASPartOfMe
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Joined: 25 Aug 2013
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Posts: 34,483
Location: Long Island, New York
10 Aug 2023, 8:56 am
Quote:
A disability advocate says he asked AI to generate photos of “an autistic person” 148 times, and with the exception of two photos, all the images showed white men.
In a TikTok posted on Monday, Jeremy Davis (@jeremyandrewdavis) says that not only is artificial intelligence racist, it is ableist as well. He shows images that he asked AI to generate with the prompt “an autistic person” with the parameters “lifelike,” “photoreal,” and “photojournalism.”
All of the photos show white, thin, young men. Only twice did the software produce photos of women
Davis said he asked AI to produce images of “an autistic person” with the parameters 148 times. The images never showed people smiling and were “moody, melancholy, depressing.”
He also says that he used “lifelike,” “photoreal,” and “photojournalism” to avoid receiving cartoon-style images or ones with puzzle pieces, the symbol of Autism Speaks, a nonprofit that many autistic people feel only increases stigma against them.
“AI is racist, sexist, ageist, and not only ableist,” Davis says. “But uses harmful puzzle imagery from hate groups like Autism Speaks.”
The reason for all of those biases, Davis says, is because what we think of as AI is actually just machine learning that works with patterns and looks for majorities and similarities, “and then excludes outliers,” thus amplifying stereotypes.
It is relatively known within the tech community that AI can perpetuate ableism. According to the MIT Technology Review, while many have focused on combatting AI’s racism and sexism, there is still work to be done about its ableism.
And that ableism has consequences: An example from a Pulitzer Center project on artificial intelligence and ableism posits that if used in hiring practices, AI’s potential inability to understand someone with a speech impediment could discriminate against that person based on their disability.
“Because machine-learning systems—they learn norms,” Shari Trewin, an IBM’s accessibility leadership team researcher told MIT Technology Review. “They optimize for norms and don’t treat outliers in any special way. But oftentimes people with disabilities don’t fit the norm.”
Trewin says that a lack of diversity among people with disabilities is harder to correct in an AI data set compared to sexism. Like Davis’ point about being smarter than AI, she suggests combining artificial intelligence with rules for the machine that will mandate diversity.
In a TikTok posted on Monday, Jeremy Davis (@jeremyandrewdavis) says that not only is artificial intelligence racist, it is ableist as well. He shows images that he asked AI to generate with the prompt “an autistic person” with the parameters “lifelike,” “photoreal,” and “photojournalism.”
All of the photos show white, thin, young men. Only twice did the software produce photos of women
Davis said he asked AI to produce images of “an autistic person” with the parameters 148 times. The images never showed people smiling and were “moody, melancholy, depressing.”
He also says that he used “lifelike,” “photoreal,” and “photojournalism” to avoid receiving cartoon-style images or ones with puzzle pieces, the symbol of Autism Speaks, a nonprofit that many autistic people feel only increases stigma against them.
“AI is racist, sexist, ageist, and not only ableist,” Davis says. “But uses harmful puzzle imagery from hate groups like Autism Speaks.”
The reason for all of those biases, Davis says, is because what we think of as AI is actually just machine learning that works with patterns and looks for majorities and similarities, “and then excludes outliers,” thus amplifying stereotypes.
It is relatively known within the tech community that AI can perpetuate ableism. According to the MIT Technology Review, while many have focused on combatting AI’s racism and sexism, there is still work to be done about its ableism.
And that ableism has consequences: An example from a Pulitzer Center project on artificial intelligence and ableism posits that if used in hiring practices, AI’s potential inability to understand someone with a speech impediment could discriminate against that person based on their disability.
“Because machine-learning systems—they learn norms,” Shari Trewin, an IBM’s accessibility leadership team researcher told MIT Technology Review. “They optimize for norms and don’t treat outliers in any special way. But oftentimes people with disabilities don’t fit the norm.”
Trewin says that a lack of diversity among people with disabilities is harder to correct in an AI data set compared to sexism. Like Davis’ point about being smarter than AI, she suggests combining artificial intelligence with rules for the machine that will mandate diversity.
_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
13 Aug 2023, 11:43 am
ASPartOfMe wrote:
’Do you see any diversity?’: Man says AI is ableist after generating 100-plus images of ‘an autistic person’—and they’re all white men
Quote:
A disability advocate says he asked AI to generate photos of “an autistic person” 148 times, and with the exception of two photos, all the images showed white men.
In a TikTok posted on Monday, Jeremy Davis (@jeremyandrewdavis) says that not only is artificial intelligence racist, it is ableist as well. He shows images that he asked AI to generate with the prompt “an autistic person” with the parameters “lifelike,” “photoreal,” and “photojournalism.”
All of the photos show white, thin, young men. Only twice did the software produce photos of women
Davis said he asked AI to produce images of “an autistic person” with the parameters 148 times. The images never showed people smiling and were “moody, melancholy, depressing.”
He also says that he used “lifelike,” “photoreal,” and “photojournalism” to avoid receiving cartoon-style images or ones with puzzle pieces, the symbol of Autism Speaks, a nonprofit that many autistic people feel only increases stigma against them.
“AI is racist, sexist, ageist, and not only ableist,” Davis says. “But uses harmful puzzle imagery from hate groups like Autism Speaks.”
The reason for all of those biases, Davis says, is because what we think of as AI is actually just machine learning that works with patterns and looks for majorities and similarities, “and then excludes outliers,” thus amplifying stereotypes.
It is relatively known within the tech community that AI can perpetuate ableism. According to the MIT Technology Review, while many have focused on combatting AI’s racism and sexism, there is still work to be done about its ableism.
And that ableism has consequences: An example from a Pulitzer Center project on artificial intelligence and ableism posits that if used in hiring practices, AI’s potential inability to understand someone with a speech impediment could discriminate against that person based on their disability.
“Because machine-learning systems—they learn norms,” Shari Trewin, an IBM’s accessibility leadership team researcher told MIT Technology Review. “They optimize for norms and don’t treat outliers in any special way. But oftentimes people with disabilities don’t fit the norm.”
Trewin says that a lack of diversity among people with disabilities is harder to correct in an AI data set compared to sexism. Like Davis’ point about being smarter than AI, she suggests combining artificial intelligence with rules for the machine that will mandate diversity.
In a TikTok posted on Monday, Jeremy Davis (@jeremyandrewdavis) says that not only is artificial intelligence racist, it is ableist as well. He shows images that he asked AI to generate with the prompt “an autistic person” with the parameters “lifelike,” “photoreal,” and “photojournalism.”
All of the photos show white, thin, young men. Only twice did the software produce photos of women
Davis said he asked AI to produce images of “an autistic person” with the parameters 148 times. The images never showed people smiling and were “moody, melancholy, depressing.”
He also says that he used “lifelike,” “photoreal,” and “photojournalism” to avoid receiving cartoon-style images or ones with puzzle pieces, the symbol of Autism Speaks, a nonprofit that many autistic people feel only increases stigma against them.
“AI is racist, sexist, ageist, and not only ableist,” Davis says. “But uses harmful puzzle imagery from hate groups like Autism Speaks.”
The reason for all of those biases, Davis says, is because what we think of as AI is actually just machine learning that works with patterns and looks for majorities and similarities, “and then excludes outliers,” thus amplifying stereotypes.
It is relatively known within the tech community that AI can perpetuate ableism. According to the MIT Technology Review, while many have focused on combatting AI’s racism and sexism, there is still work to be done about its ableism.
And that ableism has consequences: An example from a Pulitzer Center project on artificial intelligence and ableism posits that if used in hiring practices, AI’s potential inability to understand someone with a speech impediment could discriminate against that person based on their disability.
“Because machine-learning systems—they learn norms,” Shari Trewin, an IBM’s accessibility leadership team researcher told MIT Technology Review. “They optimize for norms and don’t treat outliers in any special way. But oftentimes people with disabilities don’t fit the norm.”
Trewin says that a lack of diversity among people with disabilities is harder to correct in an AI data set compared to sexism. Like Davis’ point about being smarter than AI, she suggests combining artificial intelligence with rules for the machine that will mandate diversity.
I actually consider this a slight improvement considering if you Google image "autism", nothing but young kids and even kids with downs syndrome.shoe up. Makes you wonder where the AI got it's information from.
Autism is going to be stereotyped for the foreseeable future. Only way to stop it is to try and put less of an emphasis on parents of autistic children who seem to have completely displaced actual autistics with their advocacy.
Even now, I never tell anyone in autistic because it causes more problems than it solves.
13 Aug 2023, 12:43 pm
Nades wrote:
I actually consider this a slight improvement considering if you Google image "autism", nothing but young kids and even kids with downs syndrome.shoe up. Makes you wonder where the AI got it's information from.
Autism is going to be stereotyped for the foreseeable future. Only way to stop it is to try and put less of an emphasis on parents of autistic children who seem to have completely displaced actual autistics with their advocacy.
Autism is going to be stereotyped for the foreseeable future. Only way to stop it is to try and put less of an emphasis on parents of autistic children who seem to have completely displaced actual autistics with their advocacy.
The parents are just filling what would otherwise be a near-vacuum, alas. Problem is, the autistic community (subculture of autistic adults) is nowhere nearly well-organized enough to have anywhere near the impact, in terms of advocacy, that the parents have.
The only way that this is going to improve is if the autistic community gets a lot better organized than it is now. (See my Longterm visions for the autistic community.)
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ASPartOfMe
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Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,483
Location: Long Island, New York
14 Aug 2023, 1:01 am
Nades wrote:
Autism is going to be stereotyped for the foreseeable future. Only way to stop it is to try and put less of an emphasis on parents of autistic children who seem to have completely displaced actual autistics with their advocacy.
Actual Autistics were never displaced because we were never placed. Actual Autistics are quoted in the mainstream media much more often nowadays then when Temple Grandin was the only autistic quoted.
_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
Page 1 of 1 [ 4 posts ]
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