• Krauerking@lemy.lol
    5·
    4 months ago

    So it’s pseudo-scientific racism using appearance to state desirability.

    Hmmm almost reminds me of a group using head size measurements to note undesirables, and thought of a specific appearance as hard workers and the future of the reich… But can’t recall how that went.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
      0·
      4 months ago

      So it’s pseudo-scientific racism using appearance to state desirability.

      Yeah. Phrenology is actual Nazi science.

      • SpikesOtherDog@ani.socialEnglish
        3·
        4 months ago

        I saw that you corrected yourself, but to expand, Nazis pulled from whatever information to create the narrative they wanted. It was a hodgepodge of theories, also including mysticism and even the hollow Earth theory that we live on the inside of the Earth sphere.

        Phenology itself was already nearly 200 years old by the time the Nazi party was established. It was already becoming an unpopular idea the 1830s, but it hasn’t stopped it from bouncing around and having people pull from it to this day.

        https://ethos.lps.library.cmu.edu/article/id/482/

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOPEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    I think many people are at least able to see how stupid this is.

    But I guess if put a tad more subtle, the majority of recruiters and managers might fall for it. “Candidates which prefer yellow peppers over green ones have be found by our AI to be the more capable receptionists!” /s

    (Another thing I see is that I have seen a lot of non-trivial algorithm applications that are now touted as “ai” stuff, like basic pattern recognition, algebraic solvers, PCA, board game strategies, path planning in public transport networks, image enhancement, weather forecasts, SAT solvers, and so on… some of that might have resulted out of “ai” research, often as many as forty years ago, and some not. But most people were never aware of these things, much less how they work. And now it is all touted as “ai” as in GenAI. This will only add to the confusion. The better term would be “advanced information processing algorithms”.)

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      4 months ago

      Another thing I see is that I have seen a lot of non-trivial algorithm applications that are now touted as “ai” stuff,

      The underlying problem is that “AI” doesn’t actually exist. It’s a term that has never been used honestly or scientifically. So it can be applied to literally any grift as we’re seeing now.

      The better term would be “advanced information processing algorithms”

      I agree this is a better term. But a problem is that more accurate/scientific terminology is less suitable for grifting and thus will never catch on.

    • CameronDev@programming.dev
      1·
      4 months ago

      Those algorithms were collectively referred to as AI long before gen AI existed. It is gen AI that is riding on classical AIs name.

  • ZDL@lazysoci.al
    1·
    4 months ago

    This is absolutely, positively not ever going to be used to auto-deny blacks, Arabs, “Asians”, etc. while giving it a “scientific” patina.

    There is not, for example, any code in China’s surveillance system that specifically looks for Uyghur features to trigger closer monitoring and control.

    Nope. Never gonna happen. This is science, after all, and not racist asshattery designed with Science words.

    • EightBitBlood@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      So has math. Engineering. Art. And literally everything else. Economics is not something exclusively used for fascism.

      Economics is basically just the study and measurement of graphs and how fast they are going up or down.

      That is not something inherently evil, nor is it psuedo science. I find it WILD that people now so poorly understand economics they thinks it’s the devil.

      This isn’t the dark ages. Reading a book isn’t going to summon fascism. Go read an econ book, and you’ll quickly learn that’s the case.

      Otherwise, point to the literature you don’t like rather than assuming it ALL needs to be thrown out. That kind of thinking is the path all censorship in the world is now coming down. Don’t be someone making that path easier to travel.

      • stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net
        2·
        4 months ago

        Economics, as a science, has generally been used to measure and describe capitalist economies, since economics as a science has only existed as long as capitalism.

        Which is fine.

        Economics has had a bad habit of universalizing its descriptions of capitalist economies as if they were fundamental facts about human nature.

        Which is not fine.

        So, for example, economists talk about the “tragedy of the commons”, as if it was a law of nature that publicly owned resources are necessarily used to destruction by selfish individuals, and only private ownership enforced by law can prevent this destruction. When, in fact, publicly owned resources have been maintained by societies ever since society was a thing, the commons in England existed for thousands of years before capitalism was a gleam in Adam Smith’s eye, and the term itself was popularized by Garrett Hardin in 1968 as a justification for abolishing welfare and letting poor people starve.

        But hey, our colonial ancestors took millions and millions of acres of “unowned” land from native peoples, auctioned it off to private landowners, and turned the native people into slave labor to farm it, and isn’t it nice to tell ourselves that we’re using that land more efficiently and protecting it from overuse and mismanagement by privatizing it?

        I mean, look, if I said to you “making profit is the highest good, and it is morally right for me to use every legal method at my disposal to make as much profit as I can from you”, you’d say I was evil or insane.

        But if I said to you “making profit is the most important goal of my business, and it is morally right for me to use every legal method to make as much money as I can from customers” you’d probably nod and smile and agree.

        And that’s the corrupting influence of economics, which has confused efficiency and morality so greatly that it’s convinced us that capitalism is the most moral form of social organization because a capitalist economy is the most efficient form of economic organization. Neither of which is true.

        And this ties into fascism, and dictatorships, and Belgians in the Congo, and all sorts of monstrous human rights violations in the name of profit, because monstrous human rights violations naturally occur when you reduce human beings to commodities and tell yourself the highest form of morality lies in using those commodities as efficiently and profitably as you can.

        Economics is not exclusively used for fascism, sure, but it’s done more to promote fascism than any other single science I can think of.