Facebook 'labels' posts by hand, posing privacy questions
May 2019, Reuters
Facebook uses only five dimensions to categorize your pictures. Of these, we have these: 1. Subject (food, person, animal), 2. Occasion (day at the office, 1st birthday party), 3. Intention (plan, inspire, joke). The labeling is done by hand, in order to train machines. Meat-handlers they're called in the industry. Just kidding I made that up; but that's what they are -- because our machines are too stupid right now to be able to do this.
The problem is that humans are also too stupid. Rephrase that -- it's not that humans are stupid, it's the wrong humans being used. The Big F-Book uses meatmen in Romania and the Philippines. Now I'm not sure if I'm getting this right, but it sounds like some human flesh engines from one culture are interpreting the actions of another culture a half a world away.
The problem is when things get lost in translation. If we don't get the cultural nuances right, the resulting data will be messed up. Imagine there is some little quirk, a little difference or misunderstanding between the Filipino labeler and the American poster that labels all x-posts as y. And that error gets scaled up until a huge mistake is made when screening your background for some dystopian automated system that you really want to be a part of, or not, like the criminal justice system for example.
We can't ignore these differences. They may seem small, but they get scaled by the millions. At 150mph, the tiniest pebble will throw your motorcycle right off the road.
Post Script:
Talking about multi-dimensionality, try categorizing smells.
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