Telegraph: Controversy over Google search results for 'three black teenagers'

[Springfield]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/08/controversy-over-google-search-results-for-three-black-teenagers/

Earlier this week Twitter user @iBeKabir tweeted a video of himself illustrating this difference in results served by Google images when you search for "three black teenagers" versus results for “three white teenagers.”

While the former serves exclusively police mugshots of black teens, the later shows mostly stock images of wholesome looking teens laughing and having fun.

https://mobile.twitter.com/iBeKabir/status/740005897930452992

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

Oh yeah, well when I search Walter BLACK I get results about a federal judge but when I do the same search for Walter WHITE all I get is a bunch of stuff about a meth dealer. It goes both ways man.

[TheGoodBits]

Oh yeah, well when I search Walter BLACK I get results about a federal judge but when I do the same search for Walter WHITE all I get is a bunch of stuff about a meth dealer. It goes both ways man.

/thread

[Destino]

Is it pulling up news story images that contain the phrase "three black teenagers"? I doubt Google is the issue, it's just where it shows up.

Also, when I google "three white men" and I get a bunch of mug shots as well.

[Darth Tater]

What you get on a google image search says more about you than about gogle

[Popeman38]

Skynet is racist. Makes sense, most actors portrayed white people in Terminator.

[Darth Tater]

Is it pulling up news story images that contain the phrase "three black teenagers"? I doubt Google is the issue, it's just where it shows up.

Also, when I google "three white men" and I get a bunch of mug shots as well.

I get a mostly mug shots but I also get some pics that have nothing to do with 3 white teens.

[Riggo-toni]

And if you google sheep ****ers you get dudes wearing Cowboy Jerseys, but if you google goat ****ers you get the Assad family album....

[endzone_dave]

I just googled stupid young man and almost all of the guys shown were white.  Racists.

[Dan T.]

This is the first image hit googling "zoony":

 

This is the first image hit googling "jumbo":

 

This is the first image hit googling "predicto":

 

Here is the first image hit Googling "Dan T.":

 

 

 

[Three of those four are actually true.]

[Riggo-toni]

So googling Dan T took you to a gay porn site? I think I will stick to googling Odette Annabelle....

[Dan T.]

(Somehow, this one seems oddly appropriate to anyone who has ever struggled to decipher a post of his...)

 

This is the first image hit Googling "JMS":

 

[Jumbo]

So here's the first image I get searching "three intelligent guys in the tailgate"    (no joke )

 

 

 

 

 

[Chew]

Cry me a river.  #googleimageresultsmatter

[Dan T.]

This is the first image hit Googling "Lombardi's Kid Brother":

[Major Harris]

Can we say this is really really stupid without being accused of saying there are no longer any race issues in the usa? :silly:

[TheGreatBuzz]

I thought it would be fun to try it using a different website to perform the search.  When I searched "three black guys" on Redtube, I felt inadequate.  When I searched "three white guys" I just felt grossed out. 

[Bozo the kKklown]

the issue is not google, but our society.

[tshile]

I'm just going to put this out there for people who care. If you don't care or think I'm wrong, then that's OK. I'm sure some of you already know this, and others will think I'm an idiot, it's fine either way.

 

i know enough about this to know that majority of the people commenting on it don't know anything about it (I'm thinking: "activists", media, and in general the internet). especially the media.

 

i took classes on developing image recognition programs and using well known algorithms for detecting/comparing features in images.

 

i also took classes in various subjects of artificial intelligence subsets, like machine learning, various types of search, etc. i was enrolled in a masters program at GaTech for CS, specializing in AI (which this sort of thing falls under that big, wide umbrella), until we decided to have a kid (love the kid, hate that I dropped out.)

 

all that said, i know a little (very little), about this. i know enough to know that you can't determine what is going on here without actually understanding the algorithm that google is using. you can't. you may think you can, but you can't.

 

Not just having the algorithm and looking at it, but actually understanding it. Which, is a small subset of people in the world (it's a small subset of people with CS degrees or experience in the field, to be fair. this sort of thing throws a lot of otherwise decent programmers for loops. most grades on our mid terms and finals for our undergrad classes were below 45%, not kidding... teachers started off the semester with "this is an elective, but it is not an elective, and if you don't understand what that means I suggest you find another class".) You're talking about a very small group of CS type people, data scientists (the buzzword for statisticians right now), and people with enough math background to do it but they decided to do something else instead. Not a lot of people in the grand scheme of the world.

 

google uses all kinds of information when retrieving search results. text is complex enough, images even more so. we know they include information about you (you as a person, what you do in life if they have that information, and your search history.) we know they include what other people, who have searched the same terms, clicked on when their results came back. we know they're doing various levels of image recognition, we know they analyzing the text that's used on websites associated with the image. and there's probably a ton of other things we don't know because google doesn't tell us all their secrets.

 

there are a ton of reasons why these results come back the way they do.

it could be innocent, it could be some asshat at google rigged the algorithm to be racist (doubt it, but hey, who knows until we see it), or it could be something most people don't want to discuss (like maybe "three black teenagers" is most often associated with articles about black teenagers who are arrested, and include mug shots, while "three white teenagers" is associated most often with people looking for images to steel to put on fliers/posters/whatever.)

or maybe it never used to be like this and it only started being like this because we (the people searching) only click on nice pictures of three white teenagers when we search and we only click on mug shuts when we search three black teenagers, and so it's adjusted to reflect that.

 

who knows. google knows, but not many other people.

 

 

the people guessing are clueless though, don't let them convince you of something they themselves don't actually understand.