Welcome to the blog for Prof. John Talbird's English 204 class. The purpose of this site is two-fold: 1) to continue the conversations we start in class (or to start conversations before we get to class) and 2) to practice our writing/reading on a weekly basis in an informal forum.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Racist computers
Hi all:
Here's the NPR article I was talking about in class today. See you next Monday.
I thought this article was generally eye opening when it comes to the idea of racism and the way African Americans as a race, can take offense to some of the things going on. I think it's kind of absurd to think that a computer itself could be racist, but makes me wonder how the software was even programmed. I understand that it has a lot to do with training the machines to pick up on patterns in data and examples. I guess an easy way to defend the error would be to say that it was a glitch, but I just feel like the technological advances of the world shouldn't mistake a human for an animal.
I agree w/ you Angela as far as being skeptical that a computer can be racist. At the most, this might be an example of a racist designer programming his/her conceits. But I think it's much more likely that this is just a stupid program. I think we assume infallibility from computers when, in fact, they're a lot dumber than we give them credit for.
I thought this article was generally eye opening when it comes to the idea of racism and the way African Americans as a race, can take offense to some of the things going on. I think it's kind of absurd to think that a computer itself could be racist, but makes me wonder how the software was even programmed. I understand that it has a lot to do with training the machines to pick up on patterns in data and examples. I guess an easy way to defend the error would be to say that it was a glitch, but I just feel like the technological advances of the world shouldn't mistake a human for an animal.
ReplyDeleteI agree w/ you Angela as far as being skeptical that a computer can be racist. At the most, this might be an example of a racist designer programming his/her conceits. But I think it's much more likely that this is just a stupid program. I think we assume infallibility from computers when, in fact, they're a lot dumber than we give them credit for.
ReplyDelete