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Perspective was “trained” by using millions of comments taken from The New York Times, Wikipedia editorial discussions, and other unnamed partners, which were rated by panels of 10 people each on how "toxic" they considered them to be ...
“It is human nature to revert to emotional attacks over logical discourse and the goal of tools like Perspective are to shift us back towards logic, essentially using machines to make us better humans,” ...
I would be very afraid of such a program. Programs are written by humans who allow their beliefs to be incorporated into the program. I think it was youtube who was shown to have a bias in their newsfeed.
Good thought, wrong villains. To a small extent, I suppose the program/technology design could affect the program behavior. But the main driver is the training set. Scored documents are input into the system so that it can "learn" (essentially by adjusting weights) what sort of writing is "good" and what should be identified as "bad".
It's how those training documents are scored that really affects the behavior. It's the "panels of 10 people" that you have to be worried about.
I've had some experience working with information science people developing a document analysis system. But since we didn't target an external objective (such as a "toxicity" score), our training set wasn't susceptible to that sort of bias.
@ hank: Once again I must take exception to these kinds of discussions. Folks I'm telling you are turning off potential members by this constant desire to turn MFO into a political site This is a mutual fund investing forum. As three M* discussion board members put it, "I couldn't get past all the political garbage this month. Maybe will read next month'." And another, "he discussion forum does exhibit a wider spectrum of political views than the owner may personally hold. Unfortunately, quite a number of threads simply collapse into political argumentation. As a recent poster said:
"Life is political. If you live in a society with laws, politics are involved with every aspect of those laws. And even if you live in a cave somewhere away from society, that in itself is a political statement."
The general urge by posters to politicize the forum has also degraded it, IMO." Regards, Ted
@Ted Since you're quoting me, albeit anonymously, I will respond: You post political irrelevant material all the time. If you want this to be a mutual fund only board, stop posting articles like "Why We Need a New Milton Friedman." What you really mean by too political is political views you personally disagree with. Either you walk the walk or you come across like a hypocrite.
@Hank, that's interesting. On the same technology idea, I kind of wish someone would build an app where you could marry what you are reading at any time and fact check at the same time. Maybe highlight a paragraph or sentence, press a button and have an instant fact-check appear, true, mostly true, mostly false, false. Seems doable for some smart person. This in itself might keep people from spreading BS.
@Ted, I don't disagree with your comment, but how many links with the word Trump or Obama in it? How many "Trump Rally" (I think you take delight in that one) or other political referenced articles do you think you have added to MFO since November? Let me answer, many. Filtering those may help achieve what you ask.
Yesterday, February 25, which looks like a pretty typical day for you, you started 18 new threads. As of this morning, 4 or 5 have elicited comments - a roughly 25-30% response rate.
Yesterday, I started 2 new threads. Counting the one (re Howard Marks) on which you remarked, both elicited comments - a 100% or 50% response rate depending how you measure.
I do not believe that citing verbatim from a speech by the President of the United Stares on the subject of media is necessarily politically tinged. Today it's the NYT in his sights. Tomorrow it might be MFO. Nor do I consider posting about Google's efforts to curb Internet hate speech politically tinged.
As always, Ted, your constructive criticism is appreciated.
@ hank: Once again I must take exception to these kinds of discussions. Folks I'm telling you are turning off potential members by this constant desire to turn MFO into a political site This is a mutual fund investing forum.
I agree. I read other forums where there are no such discussions and they are better sites for it.
I think most questions should be "should" variety not "can" variety. This is no inspirational "yes, we can" thing.
Freedom of speech unfortunately includes Freedom to hate. Sometimes it might be good to know who these people are so they can feel the brunt of remainder of the population. I actually worry about people who stay in the closet festering with their ugly thoughts and then one day erupt in a bad way. Venting might actually keep them grounded.
I think we need an amendment to distinguish bad day at the office from serial narcissism.
I think most questions should be "should" variety not "can" variety. This is no inspirational "yes, we can" thing.
Freedom of speech unfortunately includes Freedom to hate. Sometimes it might be good to know who these people are so they can feel the brunt of remainder of the population. I actually worry about people who stay in the closet festering with their ugly thoughts and then one day erupt in a bad way. Venting might actually keep them grounded.
I think we need an amendment to distinguish bad day at the office from serial narcissism.
A forum such as this is not the place for a civics lesson. Suffice to say comments on a web page are not protected by the constitution and certain types of hate speech are not protected by the constitution.
"I couldn't get past all the political garbage this month." @Ted: All they need do is not click on "Off Topic". Nobody is forcing anyone to read anything other than investment information.
"Life is political. If you live in a society with laws, politics are involved with every aspect of those laws." @Ted: Very true. All the more reason to warrant discussion.
"Folks I'm telling you are turning off potential members" @Ted: Say what? The recent thread "Trump calls Media "enemy of the American people" scored over two thousand four hundred views!
"Do Republicans And Democrats Drive Different Types Of Cars? " @Ted: Say there Ted, that's certainly a fund discussion, right? OK for you, but not for Hank, h'mm?
"Folks I'm telling you are turning off potential members" @Ted: Say what? The recent thread "Trump calls Media "enemy of the American people" scored over two thousand four hundred views!
I did not read that whole thread but I read the link. You omitted a couple of key words.
"At a news conference at the White House on Thursday, Trump uttered the words “fake news” seven times."
"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" Trump wrote.
I think we can all agree that fake news and those that start it are the enemy of the truth and the American people.
There is a saying that bad money pushes out good money. So it is that fake news pushes out the truth.
I think most questions should be "should" variety not "can" variety. This is no inspirational "yes, we can" thing.
Freedom of speech unfortunately includes Freedom to hate. Sometimes it might be good to know who these people are so they can feel the brunt of remainder of the population. I actually worry about people who stay in the closet festering with their ugly thoughts and then one day erupt in a bad way. Venting might actually keep them grounded.
I think we need an amendment to distinguish bad day at the office from serial narcissism.
A forum such as this is not the place for a civics lesson. Suffice to say comments on a web page are not protected by the constitution and certain types of hate speech are not protected by the constitution.
Comments
It's how those training documents are scored that really affects the behavior. It's the "panels of 10 people" that you have to be worried about.
I've had some experience working with information science people developing a document analysis system. But since we didn't target an external objective (such as a "toxicity" score), our training set wasn't susceptible to that sort of bias.
"Life is political. If you live in a society with laws, politics are involved with every aspect of those laws. And even if you live in a cave somewhere away from society, that in itself is a political statement."
The general urge by posters to politicize the forum has also degraded it, IMO."
Regards,
Ted
@Ted, I don't disagree with your comment, but how many links with the word Trump or Obama in it? How many "Trump Rally" (I think you take delight in that one) or other political referenced articles do you think you have added to MFO since November? Let me answer, many. Filtering those may help achieve what you ask.
Yesterday, February 25, which looks like a pretty typical day for you, you started 18 new threads. As of this morning, 4 or 5 have elicited comments - a roughly 25-30% response rate.
Yesterday, I started 2 new threads. Counting the one (re Howard Marks) on which you remarked, both elicited comments - a 100% or 50% response rate depending how you measure.
I do not believe that citing verbatim from a speech by the President of the United Stares on the subject of media is necessarily politically tinged. Today it's the NYT in his sights. Tomorrow it might be MFO. Nor do I consider posting about Google's efforts to curb Internet hate speech politically tinged.
As always, Ted, your constructive criticism is appreciated.
Regards
Freedom of speech unfortunately includes Freedom to hate. Sometimes it might be good to know who these people are so they can feel the brunt of remainder of the population. I actually worry about people who stay in the closet festering with their ugly thoughts and then one day erupt in a bad way. Venting might actually keep them grounded.
I think we need an amendment to distinguish bad day at the office from serial narcissism.
@Ted: All they need do is not click on "Off Topic". Nobody is forcing anyone to read anything other than investment information.
"Life is political. If you live in a society with laws, politics are involved with every aspect of those laws."
@Ted: Very true. All the more reason to warrant discussion.
"Folks I'm telling you are turning off potential members"
@Ted: Say what? The recent thread "Trump calls Media "enemy of the American people" scored over two thousand four hundred views!
@Ted: Say there Ted, that's certainly a fund discussion, right? OK for you, but not for Hank, h'mm?
"At a news conference at the White House on Thursday, Trump uttered the words “fake news” seven times."
"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" Trump wrote.
I think we can all agree that fake news and those that start it are the enemy of the truth and the American people.
There is a saying that bad money pushes out good money. So it is that fake news pushes out the truth.