• winterayars@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    6 months ago

    It’s incredible that this is such a big point of debate. This kind of thing is really ignoring the material reality of racism in favor of the minutiae. Let’s have some 40 acres and a mule, then we can start talking about race conditions.

    • SilverCode@lemm.ee
      0·
      6 months ago

      The other day I used the JetBrains AI to write some boilerplate code for me. The JetBrains AI code analyser then kicked in to tell me how poorly written the code was.

    • palordrolap@kbin.run
      0·
      6 months ago

      [I have told this story elsewhere before]

      I thought I was so clever once. I taught a word filter about “th” thinking that would solve the problem, but it still got stuck on Scunthorpe. mfw.

      Had to step through what it was doing. It had hit a rule that treated ‘oo’ the same as ‘u’ which, at least sound-wise, is valid for some words in some dialects. e.g. Consider “book”, which is identical to “buck” for many people. You can imagine why that might want to be caught.

      To save you the head scratching, it had spotted the ‘c’ then a double-‘o’ then the ‘n’ and threw it out as containing a known racial slur.

      The filter was for a random string generator so that it wouldn’t generate strings with bad words in them. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

      Since it was unlikely that it was going to generate “Scunthorpe” anyway, the problem remained unfixed.

      • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        You do? Because I don’t. There is nothing racist about the concept of master. Is a masterpiece racist? Are master tapes, Are post-graduate degrees racist? We may as well declare “work” insensitive because slaves had to work.

        Don’t get me wrong, there are many terms we should adjust. I just can’t see how “master” is one of them.

        • AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
          0·
          6 months ago

          It upsets some people. It doesn’t affect the end user. The terms “Bull Branch” and “Cuck Branch” will make stand up meeting more fun.

        • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
          0·
          6 months ago

          I guess it could be construed as racist when it’s literally “master/slave”. But I have never seen it as a normalization of slavery because there usually is no value attached to the terms, it’s just describing the relation between them. And I don’t think acknowledging that a slave generally doesn’t have much say in doing what their master tells them is racist in itself or endorsing/normalizing slavery.

          But also, I am white, and there are other terms we can use that can describe this kind of relation just fine, so, whatever. I just get mildly annoyed when some stuff that was working perfectly fine gets deprecated just to change these terms and I have to adapt to it.

          • black0ut@pawb.social
            0·
            6 months ago

            Master/slave indicates a relationship between two things. You can have masters and slaves in mechanics, for example. We’ve also had masters and slaves for decades in the tech field. Drives and floppy readers used to be configured in a master/slave setting. And of course, you have masters and slaves in programming.

            None of these examples have anything to do with race or human slavery. They’re just a way to describe how two things interact with each other. Human slavery is called that way because the relationship between the slaves and the masters can be described by that word, not the other way around.

            It’s clear that we should stop using racist words with racist intentions. No-one argues that human slavery should be allowed. However, in this case, there’s no intention of racism in the words, and we shouldn’t stop using words just because they can be used in a racist setting. Same thing goes with black paint. It’s clear that the word black is describing a color, and it is needed to correctly describe it.

        • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
          0·
          6 months ago

          I’d argue that abolishing the term “slave” isn’t the worst idea, implying that the word “master,” only in context where it’s paired with “slave,” should go as well - but that, of course, requires nuance, which a simple word filter lacks.

          • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            0·
            6 months ago

            And yet there’s a big push to rename git “master” branches, which have no slave connotations and are more analogous to master recordings.

            Its not like I’ll fight it, but it’s stupid.

            • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
              0·
              6 months ago

              There aren’t “slaves” in git, though. The term “master” in that context is that of a master copy.

                • Citizen@lemmy.ml
                  0·
                  6 months ago

                  “Historically, the default name for this initial branch was master. This term came from Bitkeeper, a predecessor to Git. Bitkeeper referred to the source of truth as the “master repository” and other copies as “slave repositories”. This shows how common master/slave references have been in technology, and the difficulty in knowing how the term master should be interpreted.”

                  Excerpt from the link the other member posted above! You’re welcome!

                • Miaou@jlai.lu
                  0·
                  6 months ago

                  It’s funny, because a quick online search shows gitlab runs operations in Saudi Arabia. But at least a bunch of idiot westerners get to feel good about themselves 🤷‍♂️

              • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
                0·
                6 months ago

                And a master copy is used to produce slaves - though slave isn’t widespread in version control it’s still quite present in databases. And it all comes from the same Master/Slave naming habit.

          • FederatedSaint@lemmy.world
            0·
            6 months ago

            Why abolish the word slave? I’ve heard of people advocating for abolishing the word “black” also. It’s crazy to me. I don’t understand how using the word at all somehow advocates for human slavery.

            • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
              0·
              6 months ago

              It draws unfortunate parallels.

              I do agree that the proposals to abolish “black” feel a bit misguided though surely well-intentioned; the etymology of “blacklist,” for example, has no relation to race whatsoever. However, there are unfortunate parallels with how “black” and “white” people were and indeed are still treated differently.

              • frezik@midwest.social
                0·
                6 months ago

                the etymology of “blacklist,” for example, has no relation to race whatsoever

                What happens is that the term “black” takes on negative connotations in a million different ways. “Blacklist” being one example. It may have no overt connection to race, but it gains it through repeated use in different contexts. Your brain doesn’t necessarily encode the different contexts in separate ways. You may be able to think it through at a high level of rationality in a debate, but not when you’re out on the street going about your day.

                The solution may not be to change the language, though. There are too many longstanding cultural associations with black = evil, and there’s just no way to get rid of them all.

                https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-bad-is-black-effect/

                “Although psychologists have known for a long time that people associate dark skin with negative personality traits, this research shows that the reverse is also true: when we hear about an evil act, we are more likely to believe it was done by someone with darker skin. This “bad is black” effect may have its roots in our deep-seated human tendency to associate darkness with wickedness. Across time and cultures, we tend to portray villains as more likely to be active during nighttime and to don black clothing. Similarly, our heroes are often associated with daytime and lighter colors. These mental associations between color and morality may negatively bias us against people with darker skin tones. If this is true, it has far-reaching implications for our justice system. For example, eye witnesses to crimes may be more likely to falsely identify suspects who possess darker skin.”

                “Overall, the “bad is black” effect only underscores the importance of finding ways to combat the various ways that our inherent biases can influence perceptions of guilt and innocence. Understanding the extent of these biases, as well as what may be causing them, represents an important first step.”

  • Ignotum@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    Race conditions can make you a racist,
    If you

    1. Are behind the wheel of a racecar
    2. You are on a racetrack

    Then there’s no nice way to say it, you might be a racist, drive safe

  • Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    6 months ago

    Don’t know if this has been fixed but Gemini was telling people it’s unethical to teach people C++ or memory management.

    Because it’s considered “memory unsafe” but Gemini took it literally and considered it to unsafe to teach.

    • RustyNova@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      proud Rust developer

      Joke aside, everytime people gush over AI, I always have to remind them that AI is just a puppy that learnt how to maximise treats, and not actually understand shit. And this is a perfectly good example.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        Right??? I’m continually floored by how many genuinely smart people I come across who ignore this concept, which is one of the biggest reasons I just don’t trust LLMs in a general sense. Like sure, I can use them fairly effectively, but the vast majority of the people who interact with LLMs don’t use a level of caution with them that’s appropriate.

        And that doesn’t even touch on the huge ethical (and legal) issues around how LLM devs acquire and use training data.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
        0·
        6 months ago

        Dogs are way more intelligent than that. LLM tech is basically a way to quickly breed fruit flies to fly right or left when they see a particular pattern.

      • Terrasque@infosec.pub
        0·
        6 months ago

        I mean, I totally agree with you. But that also kinda ignores all the useful things a dog can be trained to do.

        • RustyNova@lemmy.world
          0·
          6 months ago

          Oh I’m not talking that it can’t be trained well. That’s not my point.

          Of course dogs can be trained to sniff drugs or find people, the gist of it is that they were trained for this behaviour, and might not understand it like we do.

          A good exemple is a study that research on cancer sniffing dogs had problems with false positives.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
            0·
            6 months ago

            The false positive problem actually works in favour of the dogs, here: Their noses are excellent they know exactly whether there’s drugs there or not. They also know that the humans can’t tell so it’s easy to get a treat regardless. And they also know to not overdo it.

            Even more complicated are cats, figures that they are by and large uninterested in being studied or proving anything to you.