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+After complaints from the likes of Elon Musk, who called Geminiā€™s output ā€œracistā€ and Google ā€œwoke,ā€ the company suspended the AI toolā€™s ability to generate pictures of people. +

+

+ā€œItā€™s clear that this feature missed the mark. Some of the images generated are inaccurate or even offensive,ā€ Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan wrote, adding that Gemini does sometimes ā€œovercompensateā€ in its quest to show diversity. +

+

+Raghavan gave a technical explanation for why the tool overcompensates: Google had taught Gemini to avoid falling into some of AIā€™s classic traps, like stereotypically portraying all lawyers as men. But, Raghavan wrote, ā€œour tuning to ensure that Gemini showed a range of people failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range.ā€ +

+

+This might all sound like just the latest iteration of the dreary culture war over ā€œwokenessā€ ā€” and one that, at least this time, can be solved by quickly patching a technical problem. (Google plans to relaunch the tool in a few weeks.) +

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+But thereā€™s something deeper going on here. The problem with Gemini is not just a technical problem. +

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+Itā€™s a philosophical problem ā€” one for which the AI world has no clear-cut solution. +

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+What does bias mean? +

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+Imagine that you work at Google. Your boss tells you to design an AI image generator. Thatā€™s a piece of cake for you ā€” youā€™re a brilliant computer scientist! But one day, as youā€™re testing the tool, you realize youā€™ve got a conundrum. +

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+You ask the AI to generate an image of a CEO. Lo and behold, itā€™s a man. On the one hand, you live in a world where the vast majority of CEOs are male, so maybe your tool should accurately reflect that, creating images of man after man after man. On the other hand, that may reinforce gender stereotypes that keep women out of the C-suite. And thereā€™s nothing in the definition of ā€œCEOā€ that specifies a gender. So should you instead make a tool that shows a balanced mix, even if itā€™s not a mix that reflects todayā€™s reality? +

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+This comes down to how you understand bias. +

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+Computer scientists are used to thinking about ā€œbiasā€ in terms of its statistical meaning: A program for making predictions is biased if itā€™s consistently wrong in one direction or another. (For example, if a weather app always overestimates the probability of rain, its predictions are statistically biased.) Thatā€™s very clear, but itā€™s also very different from the way most people use the word ā€œbiasā€ ā€” which is more like ā€œprejudiced against a certain group.ā€ +

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+The problem is, if you design your image generator to make statistically unbiased predictions about the gender breakdown among CEOs, then it will be biased in the second sense of the word. And if you design it not to have its predictions correlate with gender, it will be biased in the statistical sense. +

+

+So how should you resolve the trade-off? +

+

+ā€œI donā€™t think there can be a clear answer to these questions,ā€ Julia Stoyanovich, director of the NYU Center for Responsible AI, told me when I previously reported on this topic. ā€œBecause this is all based on values.ā€ +

+

+Embedded within any algorithm is a value judgment about what to prioritize, including when it comes to these competing notions of bias. So companies have to decide whether they want to be accurate in portraying what society currently looks like, or promote a vision of what they think society could or even should look like ā€” a dream world. +

+ +

+How can tech companies do a better job navigating this tension? +

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+The first thing we should expect companies to do is get explicit about what an algorithm is optimizing for: Which type of bias will it focus on reducing? Then companies have to figure out how to build that into the algorithm. +

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+Part of that is predicting how people are likely to use an AI tool. They might try to create historical depictions of the world (think: white popes) but they might also try to create depictions of a dream world (female popes, bring it on!). +

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+ā€œIn Gemini, they erred towards the ā€˜dream worldā€™ approach, understanding that defaulting to the historic biases that the model learned would (minimally) result in massive public pushback,ā€ wrote Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at the AI startup Hugging Face. +

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+Google might have used certain tricks ā€œunder the hoodā€ to push Gemini to produce dream-world images, Mitchell explained. For example, it may have been appending diversity terms to usersā€™ prompts, turning ā€œa popeā€ into ā€œa pope who is femaleā€ or ā€œa Founding Fatherā€ into ā€œa Founding Father who is Black.ā€ +

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+But instead of adopting only a dream-world approach, Google could have equipped Gemini to suss out which approach the user actually wants (say, by soliciting feedback about the userā€™s preferences) ā€” and then generate that, assuming the user isnā€™t asking for something off-limits. +

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+What counts as off-limits comes down, once again, to values. Every company needs to explicitly define its values and then equip its AI tool to refuse requests that violate them. Otherwise, we end up with things like Taylor Swift porn. +

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+AI developers have the technical ability to do this. The question is whether theyā€™ve got the philosophical ability to reckon with the value choices theyā€™re making ā€” and the integrity to be transparent about them. +

+

+This story appeared originally in Today, Explained, Voxā€™s flagship daily newsletter. Sign up here for future editions. +

+ + +

+Tlaibā€™s sister, Layla Elabed, is now heading up the ā€œListen to Michiganā€ campaign to encourage at least 10,000 Michiganders to vote ā€œuncommittedā€ in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. Now endorsed by progressive organizations including Our Revolution and the Democratic Socialists of America, the campaign has been conducting text and phone banking, buying digital ads, knocking on doors, and sending out mailers throughout Michigan. +

+

+ā€œThis is a protest vote against genocide,ā€ Elabed said. ā€œThe resounding sense in a lot of Arab American communities and Muslim American communities is that our voices donā€™t matter here. And our lives donā€™t matter abroad.ā€ +

+

+Even if the organizers of the uncommitted campaign succeed, they wonā€™t affect Bidenā€™s chances of securing his partyā€™s nomination. But depending on how large the uncommitted vote is in Michigan, it could spell trouble for Biden in the fall, should Arab Americans and their allies stay home or cast a ballot for Trump in a state Biden, currently in a tight contest nationally, will likely need to win. +

+

+Biden has faltered on Arab American outreach +

+

+The uncommitted campaign is the product of what Arab American leaders say is the White Houseā€™s failure to listen to them and address their concerns through traditional outreach channels. Since October, Arab American leaders have been trying to no avail to get an audience with Biden to voice their concerns about the war, said Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, who grew up in Dearborn. +

+

+Biden quietly hosted a group of five Muslim leaders in late October at the White House, where they told him that he had failed to show empathy for the acute suffering in Gaza. But that was seen as a slight by the ethnic constituency of Arab Americans, who are also Christian, Druze, Jewish, Mandaen, and other faiths, as well as secular, Berry said. And in February, Biden skipped a scheduled stop in Dearborn while visiting Michigan, instead meeting with auto workers in the Detroit metro area. +

+

+ā€œFor months, weā€™ve been asking for meaningful engagement on policy, and, frankly, are being ignored,ā€ Berry said. +

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+The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee did not respond to requests for comment. +

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+Officials from the Biden campaign and the White House, as well as Biden surrogates, have visited Michigan multiple times in the last two months with the intent of smoothing things over with the Arab American community. In January, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held small meetings with some Arab American leaders after others made clear that they were too angry to be open to dialogue in a planned larger meeting. And even after adjusting the plan, there was one meeting in which all 10 to 15 people invited declined to attend in protest. +

+

+To Elabed, the fact that Biden sent his campaign manager to Michigan signaled that he was more interested in securing Arab American votes than talking ā€œabout how this failed policy is affecting our communities,ā€ she said. +

+

+In February, a group of White House officials, including USAID administrator Samantha Power, also visited Michigan to highlight how the administration is trying to get humanitarian aid to Palestinians. In a closed-door meeting, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer reportedly admitted that the administration had ā€œmisstepped in the course of responding to this crisisā€ and ā€œleft a very damaging impression, based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration, the country values the lives of Palestinians.ā€ +

+

+Biden ally Rep.Ā Ro Khanna (D-CA) ā€” who supports a ceasefire in Gaza and cutting off further aid to Israel ā€” met with Arab and Muslim leaders in Michigan earlier this month to talk about how to build support for their policy demands in Washington. +

+

+But Elabed said it still doesnā€™t feel as though Biden is adequately responding to the concerns of the Arab American community. His sharpest critique of Israelā€™s campaign came only earlier this month, when he said that it was ā€œover the topā€ and that civilian suffering and death ā€œhad to stop.ā€ Meanwhile, the US recently vetoed a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations for the third time since the start of the war. The Biden administration continues to push for a $14.1 billion supplemental aid package for Israel on top of the approximately $3.3 billion it already receives annually from the US, and is continuing to make major arms sales while offering unconditional military support to Israel. +

+

+ā€œFor Joe Biden to ignore the very communities that largely brought him Michigan in 2020 is a slap in the face,ā€ Elabed said. ā€œIt does feel so dehumanizing that a party that I have supported my whole adult life is now ignoring the deaths and murder of my people and the destruction of my ancestral land.ā€ +

+

+Arab Americans say blame Biden if Trump wins a second term ā€” not them +

+

+Michigan Gov.Ā Gretchen Whitmer is urging voters in her state not to vote uncommitted. ā€œItā€™s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote thatā€™s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,ā€ she said on Sunday during an interview on CNNā€™s State of the Union. +

+

+But many Arab American activists are arguing that Whitmer and others critiquing uncommitted voters should instead lay the blame at Bidenā€™s feet. +

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+ā€œIf the outcome is that we have another Trump presidency, it is going to be Joe Biden and his administration and the Democratic Party that hands over the White House to the Trump administration,ā€ Elabed said. ā€œBecause when you ignore your core constituency ā€¦ you have no one to blame but yourselves.ā€ +

+

+Many Arab American voters fear a second Trump presidency ā€” not just on the issue of Gaza ā€” and acknowledge that his foreign policy was disastrous for Palestinians and the Arab world, Berry said. +

+

+He moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2017 ā€” a choice made in recognition of the fact that Israel had made unified Jerusalem its capital but a decidedly controversial one given that control of Jerusalem has historically been a key sticking point in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. The US recognized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights under Trump and reaffirmed it under Biden. +

+

+The Trump administration also argued in 2019 that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are not necessarily illegal, lending legitimacy to Israelā€™s claims on the territories, but the annexations and moves toward it are widely regarded as illegal under international law, and no other country has recognized them. +

+

+Trump also instituted a travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries ā€” including the Arab states of Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen ā€” that was struck down by the courts and later revived in a different iteration. +

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+None of this is news to Arab American voters. But activists argue itā€™s still hard for them to justify voting for Biden when the Biden administration has in their minds failed to adequately push back on the slaughter of Palestinians after October 7. +

+

+ā€œWe fought back for those four years,ā€ Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said. ā€œWe pushed back and we found ways to fight back against [Trumpā€™s] policies. But the one thing we didnā€™t have was a genocide.ā€ +

+

+Berry said her organization is pushing hard to ensure that Arab Americans donā€™t just sit this election out as a result of anger with Biden, which she said is not how the communityā€™s best interests are served, but isnā€™t encouraging that they vote any particular way. The alternatives include voting for third-party candidates or casting a ballot for Trump. Many Iraqi Chaldean Christians in Michiganā€™s Macomb and Oakland counties already backed him in 2020, when he promised to shield them from deportation. +

+

+Ayoub said he himself doesnā€™t think Trump is the right option. But given what heā€™s been hearing from Arab and Muslim voters, he said theyā€™re willing to consider him. +

+

+ā€œWeā€™ll speak to [Trump]. And if he does the right moves in the campaign ā€¦ we donā€™t mind voting for him,ā€ Ayoub said. ā€œThose dead family members, those dead bodies, those images weā€™re seeing ā€¦ Thatā€™s enough for them to say, give me a few bad tweets and a few mean words and let my family members live.ā€ +

+

+What does all of this really mean, in Michigan and nationally? +

+

+The national contest between Biden and Trump, who is all but assured the GOP nomination, is tight. As one of six major battleground states in 2024, Michigan could determine the outcome of the election overall, and Biden canā€™t afford any significant splintering of his coalition there. +

+

+The Arab American community in Michigan is small, making up slightly over 1 percent of the stateā€™s population of 10 million. And outside the Arab American community, there are ā€œnot that manyā€ voters who disagree with Bidenā€™s policies in Gaza and even fewer are ā€œso motivated in their anger against Biden that they would vote uncommitted in a Democratic primary,ā€ Bill Ballenger, a longtime political pundit in Michigan, said. +

+

+But if the margins in Michigan are anywhere as close as they were in 2020 and 2016, ā€œmaybe the loss of support in the Arab American community could spell the difference between victory and defeat for Biden,ā€ Ballenger said. ā€œNo wonder heā€™s worried.ā€ +

+

+And while the war in Gaza looms large in Michigan because of its large Arab American community, itā€™s an issue that has resonated nationally among Arab Americans, who also have sizable and growing communities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia. The movement to abandon Biden over his stance on Gaza has already spread to some of those states, and his campaign is struggling to secure surrogates and endorsements that could help bridge the gap with Arab Americans and young progressives. Nationally, Bidenā€™s support among Arab American voters has fallen from 59 in 2020 to 17 percent after the war in Gaza broke out in October. +

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+Democrats generally have also increasingly turned against the war in Gaza. About half of 2020 Biden voters said that they believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in a February poll by YouGov/The Economist. +

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+That doesnā€™t necessarily mean that theyā€™ll decide how to vote based on Bidenā€™s response to the war; the economy remains a bipartisan priority for voters, and Democrats also cite health care, climate change, poverty, racism, abortion, and womenā€™s rights as top concerns. Biden is pushing the progress heā€™s made on the economy and trying to draw a sharp contrast with Trump on these other issues so far. But the number of uncommitted voters in Michigan could signal just how deep Democratic discontent is. +

+

+ā€œThis is not only isolated to Arab or Muslim voters in Michigan,ā€ Ayoub said. +

+

+Haleema Shah contributed reporting to this article. +

+

+Clarification, February 27, 10:30 am: This story has been updated to clarify Abed Ayoubā€™s views and those of Arab American voters. +

+

From The Hindu: Sports

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From The Hindu: National News

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From BBC: Europe

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From Ars Technica

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