News Opinons Politics

Colleges Create AI to Identify ‘Hate Speech’ – Turns Out Minorities Are the Worst Offenders

Researchers from the University of Cornell discovered that artificial intelligence systems designed to identify offensive “hate speech” flag comments purportedly made by minorities “at substantially higher rates” than remarks made by whites.

Several universities maintain artificial intelligence systems designed to monitor social media websites and report users who post “hate speech.” In a study published in May, researchers at Cornell discovered that systems “flag” tweets that likely come from black social media users more often, according to Campus Reform.

The study’s authors found that, according to the AI systems’ definition of abusive speech, “tweets written in African-American English are abusive at substantially higher rates.”


The study also revealed that “black-aligned tweets” are “sexist at almost twice the rate of white-aligned tweets.”

The research team averred that the unexpected findings could be explained by “systematic racial bias” displayed by the human beings who assisted in spotting offensive content.


Linda McMahon vows crackdown on teachers sexually harassing students: ‘Must end’
Enes Kanter Freedom ejected from WNBA game after courtside confrontation with WNBA player
College grad reportedly dies in Six Flags roller coaster incident as family sues theme park
California dad paralyzed from neck down after diving into ocean to rescue child
City in Anti-2A State Has 7 Times the Murders of Cities in State That Respects Gun Rights
House Ethics Committee Opens Investigation Into Democrat Rep Jimmy Gomez For Sexual Misconduct
Harvard Still Employs Professor Whose Emails with Epstein Mentioned Spies And Torture
WATCH: Young bear takes rough tumble from Denver tree after wildlife officers tranquilize it
The Green New Deal Is Back: Its Next Target – AI
American Airlines flight lands safely after laptop battery catches fire on board; passenger injured
Jury Slaps Down Burglar’s $10M Suit Against Urine-Tossing Business Owner Who Shot Him
El-Sayed under fire online after taking aim at Usha Vance, female Trump aide in weekend social media posts
Karoline Leavitt reveals next role after leaving White House press secretary post
Alaska Republicans scramble to educate voters on suspected Dem plant as ‘ballot fatigue’ threatens race
Virginia Dem admits system ‘failure’ after illegal immigrant accused in landlord killing escapes to Tajikistan
See also  Appeals court upholds limits on warrantless ICE arrests at churches

“The results show evidence of systematic racial bias in all datasets, as classifiers trained on them tend to predict that tweets written in African-American English are abusive at substantially higher rates,” reads the study’s abstract. “If these abusive language detection systems are used in the field they will, therefore, have a disproportionate negative impact on African-American social media users.”

One of the study’s authors said that “internal biases” may be to blame for why “we may see language written in what linguists consider African American English and be more likely to think that it’s something that is offensive.”

Automated technology for identifying hate speech is not new, nor are universities the only parties developing it. Two years ago, Google unveiled its own system called “Perspective,” designed to rate phrases and sentences based on how “toxic” they might be.

Shortly after the release of Perspective, YouTube user Tormental made a video of the program at work, alleging inconsistencies in implementation.

According to Tormental, the system rated prejudicial comments against minorities as more “toxic” than equivalent statements against white people.

Google’s system showed a similar discrepancy for bigoted comments directed at women versus men.

Story cited here.

Share this article:
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter