Speaking of Shane Legg, co-founder & "chief AGI scientist" 🙄 of Deepmind, here is this gem he co-authored in 2007 titled "Universal Intelligence" where he wonders, as one does,
"Are men on average more intelligent than women? Are white people smarter than black people?" 🤔 Questions white men like to "ask"
They continue.
"determining whether a test, perhaps quite unintentionally, is partly a reflection of the race, gender, culture or social class of its creator is a subtle, complex & often politically charged issue...many have concluded that it is wise to stay well clear of this topic"
Ahh but not them! Our gallant "researchers" will not steer clear of this topic. They continue,
"In reality the situation is not as bad as it is sometimes made out to be."
Tell me more!
"Although the details of the definition are debated, in broad terms a fair degree of consensus about the scientific definition of intelligence and how to measure it has been achieved."
Smdh. I don't even want to see their citations or read the footnotes as Emily M. Bender says.
It is unfortunately a sign of how widespread these views are that they felt like it made sense to cite it — but I guess two years after the Larry Summers controversy, people still felt empowered to repeat scientific racism.
Kinda scared what would arise from a bibliometric analysis of scientific racism on CS arxiv.
Should do a similar analysis on crank magnet evil twin site vixra.org as well, for comparison.
@timnitGebru Ugh. I'm sorry you have to do that. I know how horrifying it is being forced to read all the xenophobic shit people say about you.
Every time I see a trans woman debunking TERFs, I know they're doing a horrible job that is incredibly bad for your mental health.
@timnitGebru what consensus there is, all points the other way. Most experts regard "intelligence" measures as empirical tools mainly of use in pedagogy; the view that they are otherwise has collapsed in the face of evidence that shows that such measures are enormously influenced by environmental factors and test design.
It's very easy, though, for someone with a STEM background to go down this rabbit hole, there is all this pretty mathematics. But the data it is applied to is garbage.
@timnitGebru
In red marker on the first page
"Yeah, you WOULD write some shit like this"
@timnitGebru The abstract opens: "A fundamental problem in artificial intelligence is that nobody really knows what intelligence is."
And my first thought is: Well, yeah. It's just a complimentary thing that people say about one another for mixed reasons. Like "that outfit suits you," or "the work you put into this really shows."
But no! The authors assume that all words represent quantities.
This is just so very stupid. George Derby skewered this in "New English Grammar," Phoenixiana (1855).
That reminds me of a History of Science course I once took. Intelligence tests were also briefly dissected.
My favourite example was from the time scientists started to weigh human brains.
Male brains were bigger & heavier, which proved men were more intelligent than women - until some bright spark remarked that relatively speaking the female brain was bigger...
... which was the exact point that scientists decided (brain) size did not matter.
Timnit Gebru (she/her).
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