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46 points gmays | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.204s | source
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throwup238 ◴[] No.41916343[source]
> Sarcasm, cultural context and subtle forms of hate speech often slip through the cracks of even the most sophisticated algorithms.

I don't know how this problem can be solved automatically without something that looks a lot like AGI and can monitor the whole internet to learn the evolving cultural context. AI moderation feels like self driving cars all over again: the happy path of detecting and censoring a dick pic - or self driving in perfect California weather - is relatively easy but automating the last 20% or so of content seems impossibly out of reach.

The "subtle forms of hate speech" is especially hard and nebulous, as dog whistles in niche communities change adversarialy to get past moderation. In the most subtle of cases, there are a lot of judgement calls to make. Then each instance of these AGIs would have to be run in and tailored to local jurisdictions and cultures because that is its own can of worms. I just don't see tech replacing humans in this unfortunate role, only augmenting their abilities.

> The glossy veneer of the tech industry conceals a raw, human reality that spans the globe. From the outskirts of Nairobi to the crowded apartments of Manila, from Syrian refugee communities in Lebanon to the immigrant communities in Germany and the call centers of Casablanca, a vast network of unseen workers power our digital world.

This part never really changed. Mechanical turk is almost 20 years old at this point and call center outsourcing is hardly new. What's new is just how much human-generated garbage we force them to sift through on our behalf. I wish there was a way to force these training data and moderation companies to provide proper mental health care .

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hcurtiss ◴[] No.41916819[source]
I think there's a genuine conversation to be had about whether there even is such a thing as "hate speech." There's certainly "offensive speech," but if that's what we're going to try to eliminate, then it seems we'll have a bad time as the offense is definitionally subjective.
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mewpmewp2 ◴[] No.41917089[source]
There is a definition for hate speech though.
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reginald78 ◴[] No.41917142[source]
Actually, I think the problem is there are many definitions of hate speech.
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mewpmewp2 ◴[] No.41917213[source]
I think there's only 1 main definition. Which is clear in spirit, but it's of course possible that people may interpret the definition definitely.
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jacobr1 ◴[] No.41917439[source]
That may be so, but the denigrate (and common case as this thread suggests) is to expand the notion to any offensive speech that is disliked by the offended person. That is much more subjective and hard to define. The fact that we have some (better) definitions doesn't really help. The desire to censure speech is widespread, for different reasons, many conflicting. And the fact that there might be a rough academic consensus on where to draw lines (at least theoretically if not practically) isn't good enough in practice to actually define clear rules.
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1. mewpmewp2 ◴[] No.41919422[source]
The spirit needs to be understood clearly. The spirit of hate speech is to by forms of communication cause harm to a person or group of people for certain inherent characteristics that are not harmful for the society. Harm in such a way that manifests itself as violence or discrimination.