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Education AI Technology

Hour of Code Will Teach Kids How To Use AI To Judge Who Is 'Awesome' Or Not 42

Posted by BeauHD from the don't-judge-a-fish-by-its-looks dept.
theodp writes: In 2003, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously faced expulsion from Harvard after launching FaceMash, a type of "hot or not" website for Harvard students that asked visitors to review pictures of female students and rate their attractiveness. So perhaps it's fitting that during next week's Hour of Code, Facebook-sponsored Code.org's signature tutorial will introduce schoolchildren aged 8 and up to Artificial Intelligence concepts by asking them to review pictures of fish and rate their "awesomeness."

"A.I. is learning which fish are 'awesome' and then sorting them based on the data provided by the student," explains Code.org in a post describing AI for Oceans: a #CSforGood activity, in which students create training data by answering the question of "Is this fish awesome?" by clicking on an "awesome" or "not awesome" button. It's a well-intentioned cautionary lesson in AI: Training Data & Bias, and one that seems to presume today's 3rd graders will know the correct answer to "Is it fair to use artificial intelligence to judge a fish by its looks?" better than certain circa-2003 Harvard students might have!
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Hour of Code Will Teach Kids How To Use AI To Judge Who Is 'Awesome' Or Not More

Hour of Code Will Teach Kids How To Use AI To Judge Who Is 'Awesome' Or Not

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  • some math, code and fish..
    Rate a fish and fish awesome? Looks?
    Re ""Is it fair to use artificial intelligence to judge a fish by its looks?""...if thats the question, yes, yes it is...
    Learn to do the math, learn that some questions are all about looks...
    • I have to ask myself: do I give a fuck about this?

      And the answer is: no.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The headline is pure clickbait. It's not "who", it's "which fish".

      • The headline is pure clickbait. It's not "who", it's "which fish".

        So it's OK to evaluate the awesomeness of fish based on their appearance, but not humans?

        • This is AI, the followup use will be to judge humans based on whether or not fish are awesome.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Meh, if we're talking about Halloween costumes it's perfectly fine to judge humans on their appearance. Also many people express themselves through appearance, take pride in the way they look and want it to be a statement. Like everybody dresses up for a date or a job interview, I think most would actually get offended if you genuinely didn't give a shit. We just don't want to be caught on the flip side, particularly when we feel looks should be irrelevant like when the boss hires the secretary with the bi

          • What's wrong with hiring an attractive secretary or receptionist? These are low skill jobs that pay well for the little effort required so why not filter by attractiveness as well? The other criteria for a receptionist (since we don't have secretaries anymore, we have EAs which is different) are: show on time, answer phone, be polite, shower. Any hot 19 year old can handle that. Why discriminate against hot 19 year olds? They need jobs, too.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Yes.

          • Harrison Bergeron was no more of an instruction manual than 1984. Appearance is a perfectly valid criteria for evaluating people. If I want some manual labor done, I'm going to hire the people that appear capable of doing it because no one has time to give some kind of formal assessment to see who's most capable of lugging around 50 pounds.

            If someone's out of shape or has a poor appearance that's probably one of the easiest things to improve because it's actually possible. Work out, eat better, dress bet
        • It is very ok to differentiate between humans based on attractiveness. Who do it all day, every day. Anyone who says otherwise is blind or a liar. Different cultures have different concepts of what is attractive which tend to change over time but those standards are applied at all times by everyone.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          The AI cant work for the fashion industry.
          Works great for sorting pretty fish. As fish can all be awesome.
          An AI with a SJW CoC limit on math that wont sort for humans who are photogenic.
          Never buy from any AI made my any US brand with a SJW CoC that cant sort humans if that is the task.

    • incidentally I have come to just not use any sw package with the word "awesome" in the name. it's like some guy arriving at a party and telling that his name is "Awesome Aardvark" and that some popular chick liked him once.

      in the meeting to decide the theme for this years hour of code they just talked with each other like "ooh it's gotta be something.. AWESOME! YUEAH CODE F YEAH!" and came up with this. probably spent some budget on coke and hookers while doing it. ..besides, an hour of code? for noobs to

    • it's about "awesomeness"!

  • Poisoning the Well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Saturday December 07, 2019 @06:24AM (#59494576)
    We keep hearing complaints of "bias" to discredit AI that might reach objective but politically incorrect conclusions. This is just using a nonsense question to make the AI's task seem silly.

    It's a well-intentioned cautionary lesson in AI: Training Data & Bias, and one that seems to presume today's 3rd graders will know the correct answer to "Is it fair to use artificial intelligence to judge a fish by its looks?" better than certain circa-2003 Harvard students might have!

    Yes, it is fair. It is also ridiculous and irrelevant. That doesn't make the "girl hot or not" question ridiculous or irrelevant by extension, nor Facemash's results any less accurate.

    This is 100% about indoctrinating kids and 0% about teaching them anything related to AI (or code).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Fish have awesomeness that can be tested for.
      Humans cannot be sorted by their looks... for reasons, a CoC and SJW...

    • This is 100% about indoctrinating kids and 0% about teaching them anything

      Cannot be said enough.

    • Um... no. There are serious concerns with how algorithms (what we're calling A.I. these days) could be programed to disproportionately hurt certain groups.

      The most common example is applying computers to "broken windows" policing to do pre-crime. Black people get stuck in poor neighborhoods due to zoning laws designed for it (look it up, a common trick was to require unnecessarily large back yards to raise the price of the plot of land beyond what they could afford). This leads to slums.

      Then you sen

  • The champion of the useless since its inception.

  • So if they can use "AI" to determine who is awesome, at the same time they are telling you who is not awesome. Awesome or loser?

    This is just plain stupid, wrong, and only those without the intelligence to think for themselves would think otherwise.

  • Awesomeness, like hotness, is not a simple trait. It's composite. Once data is available, is there some way to factor-analyze the results to identify what leads to that conclusion? There IS such a thing as opinion, you know, And opinion is real, valid, and subject to influence.

    Your opinion about X will determine how you respond to X. No amount of SJW urging is going to change that. And others' opinions of you are going to affect your life. Do you want to passively accept yourself, or take actions that will

    • they're saying you should be aware of how you got those opinions and the origin of your biases.

      I like red heads. I'm also red/green color blind, so I'm not picking up on the hair color. It's more the facial features red heads tend to have. Why do I do this? Because when I hit puberty Kim Cattrall was at the height of her 80s career and the first actress I crushed on. Is it valuable for me to know this? Maybe. Helps that I know I'm more prone to fall for a red head :).

      There are obviously better examp

    • This was my initial thought. It's a fine lesson for adults, but for children? Not quite yet. Maybe for the gifted students.

      Something like June Tate-Gans' demo [youtube.com] at CES would be more appropriate. It's much easier to understand and verify that it's working.

  • Wow you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel here to find something to bitch about.

  • But I would definitely be the kid who rates the most hideously monstrously ugly fish as the most awesome.
  • It's a good thing there are always more fish in the sea. Some are awesome. Some aren't. But don't give up just because your first love doesn't work out.

  • Breaking news from 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_or_Not [wikipedia.org]

  • And why are we training kids to pepper adjectives like an Apple Marketing team?

  • The evidence so far is that learning to code confers no benefit to any other subjects at school. The reverse is more likely, i.e. knowledge typically learned in maths, sciences, etc. are prerequisite to being able to learn to code.

    Taking time & resources away from core school subjects to teach kids to code is a really dumb idea. Tech billionaires send their kids to Montessori schools (where computers are banned) & don't let their kids use computers or devices at home. It's about time more people sta

  • ... 3rd graders will know the correct answer ...

    Half the students will prefer fish with big teeth and half will choose big eyes. Thus, the algorithm will contain the same discrimination as other AI models: We won't call this model racist/sexist, or anti-Semitic/Islam-phobia.

  • As a geneder neutral piscine myself I find this highly offensive! We will not be targetted, sorted, catalogued or...or....fried in breadcrumbs with a little tartar sauce....

    Oh screw it, just rate them on their tastiness and have done with it!

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