Comment by kelseyfrog

12 days ago

"Bias in relation to what?" is the huge unanswered question I left the article with.

Are we even talking about the same thing when we discuss this topic? Are we talking about bias with respect to the training set, or bias in the training set with respect to reality, bias with respect to our expectations, or bias in reality? Each of these are completely different problems and each have different causes, importance, and consequences.

I can't help but think that at least some people are uncomfortable with reality being reflected back at them. When we generate images conditioned on occupation, should they reflect the racial proportions documented by the BLS[1]? It feels very, "I don't care what you do about them, but I don't want to see homeless people." Being confronted with reality is deeply unsettling for some people. Likewise, I'd be unsurprised to hear that some people would be uncomfortable if images generated by conditioning on occupation did accurately reflect reality because in their minds, reality is more diverse than it really is.