Google Gemini Anti-Whiteness Disaster Is a Cautionary Tale About… Gaming?
Look past the cultural wars of the US
This article is a selection from The Algorithmic Bridge, an educational project to bridge the gap between AI and people.
Google’s Gemini disaster can be summarized with this sentence:
A non-problem with a terrible solution; a terrible problem with no solution.
By now I’m sure you all have seen the lynching Google has received online after Gemini users realized it’s almost impossible to get the chatbot to generate images of white people. Among many others, Elon Musk, Yann LeCun, Paul Graham, Nat Friedman, and John Carmack chimed in with (more or less reasonable) criticisms and warnings about Google and its “bureaucratic corporate culture,” to quote Graham.
After almost unanimous backlash (except by Googlers in charge of Gemini and ethicists), Google decided to stop the chatbot’s ability to generate people until they solved the issue.
Before I continue, and because this topic is highly sensitive and prone to misinterpretation, let me say clearly that I believe diversity is important — insofar as it reflects reality accurately. Forcing it out of a racist anti-racist identity is wrong just like ignoring when discrimination you don’t…
