An Asian MIT student asked AI to turn an image of her into a professional headshot. It made her white with lighter skin and blue eyes.::Rona Wang, a 24-year-old MIT student, was experimenting with the AI image creator Playground AI to create a professional LinkedIn photo.
It’s less a reflection on the tech, and more a reflection on the culture that generated the content that trained the tech.
This is a real potential issue, not just “clickbait”.
If companies go pick the most professional applicant by their photo that is a reason for concern, but it has little to do with the image training data of AI.
Especially ones that are still heavily in development
A company using a photo to choose a candidate is really concerning regardless if they use AI to do it.
Some people (especially in business) seem to think that adding AI to a workflow will make obviously bad ideas somehow magically work. Dispelling that notion is why articles like this are important.
(Actually, I suspect they know they’re still bad ideas, but delegating the decisions to an AI lets the humans involved avoid personal blame.)
Again, that’s not really the case.
I have Asian friends that have used these tools and generated headshots that were fine. Just because this one Asian used a model that wasn’t trained for her demographic doesn’t make it a reflection of anything other than the fact that she doesn’t understand how MML models work.
The worst thing that happened when my friends used it were results with too many fingers or multiple sets of teeth 🤣
No company would use ML to classify who’s the most professional looking candidate.
Companies already use resume scanners that have been found to bias against black sounding names. They’re designed to feedback loop successful candidates, and guess what shit the ML learned real quick?