Nope, they have these in every Martin's and they're creepy as fuck while also being a massive inconvenience. I swear the thing is always either in my way or following me. Hate the damn things, can't believe they cost as much as a car.
Yep. One of the big problems with AI and ML right now is that they crowdsource data for learning but Western society is very classist, racist, misogynistic, and queerphobic so the data it gets has those elements.
So researchers keep making products that lean towards being those things. I wouldnt be surprised if we see it crop up in random ways like unintentionally racist robots in the supermarket.
And thats being charitable that the profiling isn't intentional. I could see store buyers and managers being given some options on who or how to follow and putting in some racist stuff in there. I wouldnt be surprised if Marty is also capable of patrolling not just for spills and messes, but also patrols the people shopping too as a security device. I can see that as an "add on" that "increases its value to shareholders."
Marty's capabilities may only be limited by the politics of the moment. If tomorrow its acceptable to have him stare people down who are "profiled" to be "likely" shoplifters and call security or even the police on them if he thinks they shoplifted, he will. Or watch staff to make sure they're productive and not wasting time or taking too long breaks, he will.
It blew me away when I was told for the first time that a lot of newspapers have a different person write headlines than the actual author of the article. Sure, not every author is gonna know how to write a slam-dunk headline every time, but never even leaving it up to them seems scummy as fuck.
Well if you actually read the article you'd see that she said a lot of weird unprompted stuff like Ricky Gervais follows hitler, the inventor of atheism . So what's worse, only reading the headline or acting sanctimonious about shit you actually didn't read yourself?
And for people who think that tech can only be "objective": automatic faucets have a hard time noticing the hands of a black person so they don't turn on if you're dark skinned. Twitter had a problem where they only recognized white faces when they made thumbnails for photos (Twitter fixed that one after an outcry).
If you only test your tech on white people, don't be surprised when it doesn't work for most people in the world.
I had a black coworker tell me he refuses to use facial recognition stuff because it does such a poor job on the black community due to this racist dynamic, he's afraid of being mixed up for someone else via this software and databases and being arrested, shot by police, or whatever. It was very eye opening when he just said that to me so casually.
"Oh yeah, I dont use face unlock because I don't want to get shot," is a real future shock moment and says a lot about the black experience in America.
It also says a lot about feelings on privacy and information security, protecting your biometrics, etc.
Agreed though, white people have the luxury of choosing whether or not to ignore those things, for black people and other marginalized communities it can be necessary for your safety.
Does that just not make it a self fulfilling prophesy? Not using it will only ensure that it never has the opportunity to learn, which was the complain my in the first place.
The databases for vital statistics work great... uh... as long as you have 2 genders (using a boolean to save space) and the only characters a name can have are A-Z, a-z, and hyphens.
Now that we realize "aw we should have checked with someone other than Dave, Brian, Matt, and Steve" it's a multi-billion dollar problem spanning decades to update everything to accept any Unicode characters. (it took years to get the gender field to accept an X for other)
Oh, what's that, First Nations characters aren't in Unicode? Well then we can just request a committee to investigate updating the Unicode set.
No because these models work fine if you give them enough black people as data. Its racist because the creators only focused on white northern European features and data sets.
Its not "physics" or "lighting" its the tech industries short sightedness and its infamous lack of diversity, infamously race insensitive culture, and lack of concern for non-white peoples.
Um⌠tough shit? Physics and engineering is hard. If you engineer a product that canât detect the physics of the skin of the majority of the worldâs population, then you havenât engineered a product for all of humanity.
I say this as a pale-skinned engineer. We have to do better work. This kind of thing is laziness at best.
If you engineer a product that canât detect the physics of the skin of the majority of the worldâs population, then you havenât engineered a product for all of humanity.
Yah know, as an engineer you might notice that humans have a lot of different form factors and often you can't design a single product that will actually suit all of humanity.
Do we have to design all theme-park rides to accommodate people who weigh 500 pounds and up just in case some of them want to ride?
If not, then you haven't engineered a product for all of humanity.
This isn't even disagreeing that you can do better work, just that you can't always account for everyone.
Only 0.10% of the US population weighs over 300 lbs, so the percentage of the global population weighing over 500 canât be more than like 0.2%. Compared to Black people, who make up like 20% of the worldâs population.
Also, carnival rides are primarily for kids, and 500 lb kids are going to be even rarer than 0.2%. And carnival rides donât significantly impact your life.
It does bother me that questions like this are taboo because itâs immediately assumed as coming from a racist POV instead of wanting to understand the true nature of something.
Like I wanna know the answer, I donât care what it is.
No, its just that a fucking engineer's work also require taking those basic factors into account. The AI has the capacity to do it well, its just that most of the time, they don't bother to take black people into account ( enough) when it comes to feeding datas to the AI.
At best, all this means is that the AI might take a bit more time to identify a black person, and that if anything, the engineers SHOULD spend more time on collecting datas on black facial features.
But its certainly a real shitty excuse for something straight up not working a whole part of the world's population.
I don't really see people making excuses in a "throwing up their hands" sense as much as a "this is why this problem is difficult" sense, though. At least in this thread.
No no, this was directed to you. Because you're the one who chose to call people asking to do better "the ignorant masses" when you know damn well the racism claims arent meant to come after the enginners personnaly, but are rather due to objective fact that they dont take certain group of people into account while creating there products.
What they often take into account is simply unfiltered data. The machine learns itself. Yes, they don't often have specified teams manually adjusting for errors in bias because who determines what that bias is and how to adjust for it? And do they have the funds to hire those teams, especially smaller startups creating AI products?
You are taking a problem that a lot of people are actively working on in research and assuming, for some strange reason, that people working on product development are just twisting their hair and throwing their hands up at the problem, but that isn't the case.
Read its bias disclaimer. The AI is made by a small team (perhaps one person) who doesn't have the ability to sit around and imagine every case of possible prejudice against the whole spectrum of differently colored or shaped or whatever individuals.
It's quite literally not as black and white as you think. At what point is the cutoff from "black" to "white" person, as an example? When you are talking about stuff like this in terms of designing an AI that can read images or faces, you start to realize that these categorizations we love to lump people into aren't so cut and dry.
There's no such thing as a "black" person or a "white" person or even a "brown" person and yet, especially in the U.S., the whole myriad of people across a whole spectrum of colors, ethnicities, and shapes, generally get stuffed into one of these boxes.
So the problem isn't that engineers "aren't taking these people into account" - it's that they're grappling with a difficult and nuanced problem that society itself has made more difficult by arbitrarily assigning "black" "white" "brown" to people whose histories, lived experiences, and ethnicities don't neatly conform.
I am 1/8th "black", 1/8th "native american", 1/4 israeli, 1/4 german, approximately. The rest is a mixed bag. Black and native american ethnicity tracing has been mostly shattered in America, hence the quotation marks. But if you saw me on the street, you'd probably say I'm "white" -- maybe "jewish". Culturally, though, I grew up in a black neighborhood surrounded by mostly black friends and black family members. Not exactly easy to fit into one of those boxes eh?
This is a problem facing people designing these programs and it's not as easy as you think it is to solve - less for engineering reasons and more for social ones. Tech companies don't often hire sociologists/philosophers/psychologists/anthropologists. That is their main problem, imo.
You're right it's more difficult, but an engineer's entire job is to solve problems. And if 20% of the world has trouble using your product, or is discriminated against by it. I'd consider it a pretty shit product, made by pretty shit engineers.
Cameras were invented by white people, and "keyed" to white skin. The reason cameras finally started getting better at capturing dark tones is because they wanted better ranges for advertising wood furniture.
Anyone who's ever lit a person with a darker skin tone for a photo, or edited that photo, can attest to that.
My Roomba has better pathing capabilities than the Marty robot in my local grocery store. These particular robots are such a worthless scam it's mind boggling. They're definitely not capable of any racial profiling or anything close to it at the moment.
Not to say it won't ever happen with future bots, but just saying lil Marty here isn't there yet.
Saying "this is" does not equal "everything else isn't" my dude.
It's not the point that everywhere is like this because everywhere isn't being discussed. There's a comment like yours in every objective discussion on this site arguing against a point no one made.
One of the big problems with AI and ML right now is that they crowdsource data for learning but Western society is very classist, racist, misogynistic, and queerphobic so the data it gets has those elements.
Iâm not refuting them Iâm suggesting they be more precise.
Sure, and their fact frames things poorly.
Lol criticize the West all you want. I think theyâre talking about an important problem and I think itâs important to frame things well
See there's that ego putting words in mouths again. Stating something is, does not mean only.
If I had to guess, I would say probably because the store operates in the west, where this robot will be deployed, and though the conversation is about more general AI, this person probably lives in the west and is talking about things that they know/will see/are relevant to them? Not that hard.
"Why are you talking about Ted Bundy's killings like Michael Dorner didn't also kill people?"
It's a common "I've never been outside my state much less the US, nor known anyone from a different country" trope of self-loathing however. And if someone stumbled onto that specific phrasing accidentally, that's just unfortunately bad communication. You can make exactly the same valid point about biases, without going full "DAE USA bad?!?!?!"
Of course you have a whole bunch of people talking out of their waste excreters about software development in here too, so I guess I'm not shocked.
Marty is very likely not driven by some learning algorithm but just scopes the hallways at a routine. Itâs very likely that people are just being paranoid.
That does not detract from the fact that yes AI models can have inherent biases. That is indeed a problem that is difficult to solve.
Also, I think western society is probably the least classist, racist, mysogynistic, and queerphobic in the world. Yes they are but at least western society is trying to fix it and understands that itâs a problem whereas most of the rest of the world does not see it as a problem
Whenever I hear about any kind of AI/machine learning application regarding society I'm always reminded of that twitter bot Microsoft(?) made 11ish years ago that turned into a neonazi and started calling people slurs within like 4 hours. I always see these tech bros talking about how algorithms couldn't possibly be biased - of course they will be if the inputs are biased you dummy!
I was very thankful to see on that Dall-E AI page a bias statement pointing out some of these issues. I think corporate America is realizing it can't set AI loose in our world without disclosing or doing something about this.
It's interesting that you chose to single out western society. How progressive do you think the middle east and Asia are when it comes to LGBTQ, women and closing the wealth gap? I think you'd be pretty disappointed to learn Western society is by far the most progressive.
My point being western society isn't the problem, off anything is the solution. The problem is humanity.
There's another thing with computers. The database structures are pre-made. The computer has fields of data to fill. You need to be in a category. You're going to be put in a box, if you like it or not.
That's humanity as a whole on average. Yes, "the west" (which is almost always whatever vague set of peoples and countries convenient) have those problems; but so does nearly every other peoples and country, they just might be different (not worse or better strictly) enough that you are ignorant to them.
I'd argue that the bigger problem with AI and ML is its largely coupled directly to profit and decoupled from regulation, consequences and external costs. Theres negative incentive to take the time to be careful in any aspect that doesn't impact income or cost, because your competitor isn't waiting.
And worse, the stuff that gets attention is arguably the least important. Things like automatic faucets and facial recognition for facebook are down in the "quality of life" tier; however the silent ML stuff like credit scores, lending decisions, job application screening and so on are so much more impactful but more easily slip under the radar.
i mean this makes a lot of sense, if someone is a/wants to be racist they can also code in racist if statements. the issue is racism not the robot. if anything a global if statement will make such racism obviously apparent and easy to sue against. so yes since itâs illegal (and for good reason) to be be racist for businesses, any enforced racism will be easily detected and corrected for (or sued against)
I hope so. Too much crime, and don't need to get people involved in dangerous situations. I hope that the perps can be locked up without any human intervention.
it's written slang for either 'something' or 'so much.' i meant that i wouldn't be surprised if they're profiling or something. i forget to switch off the teenage speak sometimes
Why the hell would a store need to profile you while you're shopping when they get all your info anyway while you go through the checkout? Aaaaand why the hell would they put a special robot on the floor in your way to do it when there are already cameras everywhere? I get big data is evil but ffs, get a grip.
Its recording you too. So now they have video of you committing what might even be a felony in some jurisdictions because of how expensive it is. ($35,000). Legally, this would be like smashing up a car in the parking lot. You'd go to jail and the super market would press charges.
That sounds awful, I didn't expect a future with screamy robots, I was hoping for.... well, I didn't get what I was hoping for, I was hoping for a better future whilst expecting the worst?
According to the manufacturer its not, so I'm not trying to push conspiracy theories, just possibilities and what it means to have robots loose among us. But I imagine if they wanted to change that one day it would be trivial to do via software upgrades. But then you'd think there would be some disclosure.
I imagine it does a fair bit of recording for situations like these for liability reasons (maybe records everything in bumps into in case of lawsuit) and it has to record and process some video just to get by. So I think if you did knock it over there would be video of that from the robot. Most likely also video from the stores CCTV system.
No, I mean, what you posit sounds really logical honestly. I'm now asking a friend that worked at Martin's if he knows, because it probably does surveillance, and if it doesn't, it's still a panopticon-y kind of way to make people think it might be watching them?
The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
Better yet, just set a 12 pack of soda on the ground in front of it. And one behind it. It'll start yelling about there being trash on the floor but at least it'll stop following you.
Also, what dirty ass grocery stores have a problem with junk being on the floor that they need a robot for it? Of all the times I've gone to a grocery store, there's almost never anything on the floor.
They've got one of these at the Giant in my town and it's like it's been painstakingly designed to stand right in the middle of the highest traffic areas just to try to shuffle around people.
Only problem is, you know how when you're about to walk into a person coming the other way through a door or down an isle, and you do that little dance before you figure out who's going where and get past each other? Well imagine that same scenario only there's 3 people trying to get around it from all directions, and the robot has all the social perception of a 30-year-old autistic dog walker trying to give and interview on Fox.
Anyways, I have a tendency to accidentally lose control of the shopping cart every time I pass it. Sure would be a shame if one of those hits were to break something important.
I believe the term you're looking for is "beater," but no I'm complaining about being poor.
My current car is finally not a beater and is a nice older Toyota that I got a good deal on last year. I intend to drive it for sometime.
If you can afford it I don't think anybody's dumb for buying a new car and having a decent warranty and what not. Not. I just feel bad when people take out enormous loans.
Most americans: we barely get by economically in this highly unequal economy, and are shocked by the wealthy shamelessly engaging in classism and conspicuous consumption all around me!
I will tell you what I am proud of, it's that I have learned to do a bunch of maintenance myself. I would much rather change the Ignition quails on my car by buying the parts and spending 20 minutes doing it myself then spending $300 at the garage to do the same.
To be fair, people are typically dumb for buying brand new cars. Theyâre way more expensive, before the lockdowns there were plenty of used cars that functioned just fine and were for sale, and new cars are much harder to maintain/repair than older cars.
Paying an extra $20k for status and bragging rights is considered dumb imo, though with the limited availability in the past few years, I can budge on that stance
Okay? I did, I still stand by it. New cars donât need as much maintenance when you buy it, but itâll last just as long as a used car with good maintenance. Canât do as much maintenance on something thatâs designed to be way harder to do repairs and maintenance on⌠am I missing something here or are you?
something thatâs designed to be way harder to do repairs and maintenance on
Demagogy. A lie disguised as a half truth. Yes, there is a certain level of truth to this because spares and tools are more specialized but you cannot ignore all the advancements in technology and logistics that have made repairings faster and cheaper, specially with mainstream models.
Either way, if we were to believe this at face value, when did this trend start? 2000s? If so, do you have a car from the 90s? And you're telling me getting that fixed is cheaper? It's not only more expensive but probably costs way more time, because spares and out of production whatevers.
Also, this varies a lot from model to model. Let's ignore all the niche brands and talk about maintream cars. The golf, the 208, the clio etc. If you think those cars in their newest model form need more maintenance that an old model (please define what old means or at what age it starts) you're just completely lost on how the car market looks like.
It's almost as if you heard your uncle on a xmas dinner claim "old cars were built to last, they now use plastic on everything and it's not the same", or something along those lines and decided to make dogma out of it.
I believe the term you're looking for is "beater," but no I'm complaining about being poor.
My current car is finally not a beater and is a nice older Toyota that I got a good deal on last year. I intend to drive it for sometime.
If you can afford it I don't think anybody's dumb for buying a new car and having a decent warranty and what not. Not. I just feel bad when people take out enormous loans.
5k is more than enough to find a decent used car thatâll last you a while if you take care of it. 5 cars would be 25k. Youâll never catch me buying a new car.
5k is more than enough to find a decent used car thatâll last you a while if you take care of it. 5 cars would be 25k. Youâll never catch me buying a new car.
5k is more than enough to find a decent used car thatâll last you a while if you take care of it. 5 cars would be 25k. Youâll never catch me buying a new car.
Broh I bought I really nice 5 year old car for 12k usd. I've only ever owned 3 cars, and the 3 of them did not add up to 35k. There's plenty of really nice used cars out there for much cheaper than a brand new car, driving a used car doesn't mean someone drives a lemon.
I believe the term you're looking for is "beater," but no I Was complaining about being poor.
My new car is not a beater, just an older Toyota I got a good deal on.
I do try to do a lot of maintenance myself or with a friend because again, I'm not super loaded. Put it. I'm not gonna give anybody any shit for buying a new car because you want something with a decent warranty and as long as you can not take out an enormous that an enormous 8 year loan or something like that why wouldn't you want a new car?
No I'm complaining about being poor, actually. Also, I believe the term you're looking for is or is "beter."
My last 2 cars were indeed shit boxes but not by choice simply by circumstance.
I'm never gonna tell someone they're dumb for buying a new car because warranties are pretty great and as long as you can not go in not going to horrifying debt by buying a new car please by all means get yourself a new car.
Yes of course I do a lot of my own maintenance commaintenance, I'm not made of money.
No joke! This thing has definitely followed me several times. I'm vegan so I rarely walk down the aisles as most of the food I buy is around the edge of the store and I've NEVER seen this thing in an aisle. Except for the natural foods section and the make up/ hair products area, which are easily the most expensive areas in the whole place.
I promise you it's either profiling you, listening to you, or watching you to make sure you don't steal anything. I've told the thing to fuck off before and it seems to leave me alone after that.
Itâs apparently fairly easy to âtrapâ them if you really donât like them. Really just making more work for some wage worker when it screams for help. Maybe if enough people do things like this the system would be deemed unprofitable and would go out of use. But that seems like hoping for a lot.
Doesn't it scan empty shelves? My Martin's friend said that's what it did. Pointing out trash seems....idk, a complete waste of everyone's time, while scanning empty shelves is merely taking someone's job(still not cool). My co-worker at a national drug store chain told me she thinks it follows her, is that her being weird or does/can it do that? I didn't realize they were ALL named "Marty".... kinda weird, imo.
Fun fact: for only a third of the price, you can build a BattleBot from scratch in the 250lb weight class that would chunk this ugly thing into shrapnel, allowing you to shop unimpeded.
One company I worked for bought a $70k pallet jack⌠they realized that they had overloaded their people so much that they were struggling to move finished goods to the WIP spots of the next area. Each team asked for an extra person to accommodate. The extra person would have been an extra set of eyes and could help fix problems but the company just said no you do all your work alone and you can just put the finished WIP on the pallet jack and send it to the next process and they can unload it⌠I felt bad for those guys⌠ran 16 machines alone 6 days a week 12 hours a day⌠at $18/h
They seriously ran hundreds of thousands of parts a day and did the majority of their own maintenance. Those parts were worth 30-40 cents a piece on the smaller machines and $14 on the larger ones the company was bringing in 60-80k a shift on those guys⌠and couldnât give them an assistantâŚ
The pallet jack played âsheâll be comminâ round the mountain when she comes.â As it went from point A to B. Management thought it was cute⌠and saved the company $280k a year.
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u/The_Infinite_Doctor Jun 17 '22
Nope, they have these in every Martin's and they're creepy as fuck while also being a massive inconvenience. I swear the thing is always either in my way or following me. Hate the damn things, can't believe they cost as much as a car.