Saying that patterns are dangerous because they can reinforce stereotypes sounds a lot like you are saying the stereotypes are true.

I don't agree. Stereotypes that are wrong but get reinforced by selective reporting are bad. Let's say a person believes that (to pick an absurd example) all Scottish people are rapists. Every time he reads a headline "Scottish man rapes woman" his belief will strengthen, but when he reads "Irish man rapes woman" it won't weaken. And of course there are no headlines saying "Scottish man does not rape woman".

Ubiquitous surveillance and publication of crimes has the potential to industrialize this process. If there are more rape headlines going around, then of course there will be more where the perpetrator is Scottish and the ratchet advances more quickly.

Especially if you use machine learning which easily reinforces biases. If you train it on lots of Scottish rape cases it'll learn a lower threshold for detecting Scottish people as rapists and then your bias has translated into a real statistical difference in detected crimes and even a difference in arrests and convictions.

The problem with stereotypes isn’t their accuracy (they often are inaccurate or outdated but that’s beside the point).

Otherwise you are effectively saying that it’s ok to be *-ist as long as you’re accurate.

The problem is they are unfair, dehumanizing and cruel, and based off categories we usually can’t control.

Also the gorilla example from many years ago makes it seem like the author just superficially follows this stuff from the media. It was a single instance of misclassification in a widely deployed photo categorization model, not some reproducible trend with the models.

In my public high school, the teachers just didn't teach and everyone passed.

This guy is the next Ted Bundy.

Dude needs to step down off his pedestal before he gets knocked down.

This was gross.

how?

It seems to be a popular subject lately.

Dirty Jobs, leaving software jobs to become a trade. (Update: Electrician, Mechanic, Plumber, etc...)

Lot of articles on this subject, and calls to bring back the old classes like home-econ, shop, etc...

college educated “thoughtleaders” charged $300/hour by the plumbing company, HVAC, car service department and thinks the trade jobs make that much. yeah no they more often start at $30/hour

If software isn't a trade what is it? Holy orders?

> Holy orders?

Haha, but, I'm going to say Holy Orders! Generally male, known for being single? [1] Spends of his time inside a building? Must master large quantities of esoteric knowledge? Not a path most people want to go? The role is to mediate the transcendent Potentiality to something usable by the common person? What he says is intelligible to those who know, but the field has a reputation for unintelligibility?

The tech priesthood, however, makes even no attempt at renunciation of mammon, makes no effort to subordinate its animal nature to its higher nature, and its atheism draws no one higher than their animal natures. Well, except for the Gnostic ones, who seek to free themselves from matter into a digitally spiritual body, and the AI ones who boast that they can create sentient life themselves. We, the tech priesthood, have been building a temple, but it's beginning to look like the blueprint might turn out to be the Tower of Babel instead--pridefully ascending to Heaven [2] itself--instead what we thought we were building.

[1] Priests can be women in some Anglican dioceses, and can be married if they are Anglicans or Orthodox. (Orthodox priests can only be married if they are already married before becoming a priest.)

[2] In the ancient world, "Heaven" was not so much a place (that was "the heavens") as the realm of the Forms / Being / potentiality / Unity, so the Tower of Babel was, symbolically, Man seeking forcibly to take the divine upon himself.

"esoteric knowledge"

" tech priesthood"

Creator of "sentient life"

Even "ghost in the shell"

Yeah. These used to be common terms. The comparison between tech and religious study used to be pretty common analogies.

I get that sentiment. SE can feel like a trade some days.

But we do sit at a desk and type a lot. That isn't crouching in crap.

Maybe better description "smelly, dirty, uncofortable, jobs, that people generally don't want".

>If software isn't a trade what is it?

A profession. Trades are things like electrician/plumbing/carpentry that you can typically become resonably competent in 2 or so years of training.

You can't in software development?

A Software Engineering degree typically takes 3+ years to get and then you have internships and onboarding that means it could take a novice ~5 years to actually start contributing in a meaningful way at a company starting from scratch.

Knowledge work, of course, meaning it pays well but is less honest than real work.

But I agree with you. It’s a trade. Just more recent than plumbing.

I often compare software to plumbing. No one else cares how it was done.

Much of software is a trade. But above a certain level, it is engineering.

For example, in my discussions with electricians, they understand very well how to wire up a house. But they don't actually know very much about electricity. For example, they had no idea what I was talking about when I objected them running the phone lines through the same holes as the high voltage. I said that due to inductive coupling, the phone lines would acquire a 60 Hz hum. The phone lines had to be run at 90 degrees to the high voltage wires.

They had no idea what inductive coupling was, whereas that's freshman electronics material.

I wound up removing all the phone lines and rewiring them myself. No hum!

To further it, nobody cares until it breaks. Then they still don't care, they just want it fixed as quickly as possible, cost be damned once you get to that point.

Great analogy, I'm going to use this.

This shift is supported by the current government. I am personally seeing lots of ads for fed sponsored HVAC training and things like that. Not that it’s an issue, but I’m always wary of what I’m being sold

This is hilarious.

I used a colored left-border on my blog and thought it looked pretty fresh. I didn't realize that was an AI pattern.

Then you want Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures by Samet. Unless you already have it, then enjoy some pretty (organic) trees.

My new bottom-of-the-line phone does not have a headphone jack. Did not realize that when I got it and now I'm bummed.

I was pulled over for having a non-obstructive frame on my license plate. The officer said they interfere with the red light cameras. He then presented me with a screwdriver and gave me the option of getting a ticket or taking it off. I took the screwdriver and he watched me take it off. I lost a freedom due to a shitty ml model.

Time to paint your rear-end chrome.

Well if this abuse is common the fines should rise. How would you enforce it otherwise?