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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…

76 replies

CaveMum · 13/11/2024 17:04

Interesting (and unsurprising) article on AI image generators being unable to come up with a suitable image of a man cleaning a toilet. It goes to show that the data these AIs are being trained on is inherently biased and as more people become reliant on using them for information, the more warped reality becomes.

I’m not sure what we can do to combat it, other than keep applying pressure to government and AI companies to mitigate against the bias.

https://community.thefemalelead.com/p/all-i-wanted-was-an-ai-image-of-a?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

All I wanted was an AI image of a man cleaning a toilet

One man seemed to be planning to brush his hair with the toilet brush.

https://community.thefemalelead.com/p/all-i-wanted-was-an-ai-image-of-a

OP posts:
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Boiledbeetle · 13/11/2024 20:57

CaveMum · 13/11/2024 20:53

@Boiledbeetle yiu have a very unique talent there 🤣

Aw shucks!

☺️

AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
NerdWhoEatsMedlar · 13/11/2024 21:01

I'm sorry @Boiledbeetle those rodents do not have sufficient ballage.
They are female rodents who identify as toilet cleaning male rodents.

Surely AI can help you get to 12 male toilet cleaners.

Boiledbeetle · 13/11/2024 21:07

NerdWhoEatsMedlar · 13/11/2024 21:01

I'm sorry @Boiledbeetle those rodents do not have sufficient ballage.
They are female rodents who identify as toilet cleaning male rodents.

Surely AI can help you get to 12 male toilet cleaners.

You are right! Sorry! I've rectified the issue! You can tell they are male rodents now! They've got dungarees on!

AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
Utini · 13/11/2024 21:43

Boiledbeetle · 13/11/2024 20:36

But I've already started working on it! It's going to be wonderful!

The man in the second image appears to have had a finger transplanted from one hand to the other!

Boiledbeetle · 13/11/2024 21:47

Utini · 13/11/2024 21:43

The man in the second image appears to have had a finger transplanted from one hand to the other!

I really wish I knew why AI struggles with the number of fingers humans have on each hand!

It can produce cats and cake to perfection, but expect it to put the correct number of fingers on a human hand and it starts to do that sucking in air thing that dodgy tradesmen do!

AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
tweddler · 13/11/2024 21:59

Boiledbeetle · 13/11/2024 21:47

I really wish I knew why AI struggles with the number of fingers humans have on each hand!

It can produce cats and cake to perfection, but expect it to put the correct number of fingers on a human hand and it starts to do that sucking in air thing that dodgy tradesmen do!

The best image generators are pretty good at it now, but the reason is that it's to do with fine detail across largeish areas of the image.

If you take a hand with an extra finger and zoom into a small patch, it looks fine. If you blur the image so the hands just look like a skin-coloured blob it also looks fine. It's only when you look at the fine detail across a large bit of the image (the whole hand) that something is wrong.

Image generators start with a blurry image and gradually refine it, working on patches of the image at different levels of resolution - gradually getting more detailed. This means they can get this middle level of detail wrong because there's no level of zoom at which they "see" it - if they're zoomed out enough, it's blurry and looks fine; if they're zoomed in to the fine detail, they don't get to see enough of the image to see there's a problem.

You see the same thing with text too - it looks fine when you zoom into the detail of a single stroke, and fine when you're zoomed out and it's a bit blurry, but the fine detail across a large part of the image (a single letter or a group of letters) is all wrong.

CaveMum · 13/11/2024 22:02

Boiledbeetle · 13/11/2024 21:47

I really wish I knew why AI struggles with the number of fingers humans have on each hand!

It can produce cats and cake to perfection, but expect it to put the correct number of fingers on a human hand and it starts to do that sucking in air thing that dodgy tradesmen do!

Apparently it’s because in the majority of photos hands are obscured or difficult to see, so the AI has fewer opportunities to train on the images.

I also read that it’s because AI doesn’t know what hands are - it doesn’t know how many fingers/correct proportions, etc.

OP posts:
Youthiswastedontheyoung · 13/11/2024 22:10

I asked my husband the other day why he never cleans the toilets at home. He looked at me genuinely confused and said: Why do you need to clean a toilet; you just pee and crap in it?"
Oh my.

Boiledbeetle · 13/11/2024 22:14

Youthiswastedontheyoung · 13/11/2024 22:10

I asked my husband the other day why he never cleans the toilets at home. He looked at me genuinely confused and said: Why do you need to clean a toilet; you just pee and crap in it?"
Oh my.

Time for 12 years of constant practice for him then!

NoBinturongsHereMate · 13/11/2024 23:57

Boiledbeetle · 13/11/2024 22:14

Time for 12 years of constant practice for him then!

Just make sure that, unlike the AI versions, he doesn't use a dustpan & brush, broom, pastry brush, or weird silicone spade thing.

Boiledbeetle · 14/11/2024 00:12

As a parting AI montage before bed the other day AI in one of its unfathomable word creation monstrosities came up with "marlhmarlol".

So I asked it draw what it thought a marlhmarlol looked like.

The result was interesting!

Night night!

AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
TempestTost · 14/11/2024 00:33

There are a lot of jokes, and visual jokes, about men not being able to clean toilets.

Could this confuse AI? I don't think humour is something AI really understands.

Lilgreygoose · 14/11/2024 02:03

ErrolTheDragon · 13/11/2024 19:20

See if it can manage if you specify 'man cleaning toilets in a motorway service station'. They always seem to have 'male cleaner on duty' signs in the women's loos.

Here you go.

the lack of privacy is even more special…

AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
MrPickles001 · 14/11/2024 02:08

it would only likely be bias if the data set is more photos of x person vs Y person cleaning the toilets etc

So it can hardly be bias in the traditional sense when its lack of suitable data that causes it

Sparklfairy · 14/11/2024 03:23

MrPickles001 · 14/11/2024 02:08

it would only likely be bias if the data set is more photos of x person vs Y person cleaning the toilets etc

So it can hardly be bias in the traditional sense when its lack of suitable data that causes it

Edited

Often these platforms aren't solely based on image data. The ones I posted from Leonardo plug into some kind of LLM (presumably Chat GPT but I don't know) in order to generate the enhanced prompt. So the conclusions it has drawn from both the image and text data sets are that men cleaning a toilet = bad = prompt must involve dark, dreary settings, and a sad, frustrated, or angry expression. A woman cleans a toilet with sunlight beaming through the window as she slaps a smile on her face and cracks on, delighted to be scrubbing shit off the toilet bowl in her marigolds.

MrPickles001 · 14/11/2024 03:39

Sparklfairy · 14/11/2024 03:23

Often these platforms aren't solely based on image data. The ones I posted from Leonardo plug into some kind of LLM (presumably Chat GPT but I don't know) in order to generate the enhanced prompt. So the conclusions it has drawn from both the image and text data sets are that men cleaning a toilet = bad = prompt must involve dark, dreary settings, and a sad, frustrated, or angry expression. A woman cleans a toilet with sunlight beaming through the window as she slaps a smile on her face and cracks on, delighted to be scrubbing shit off the toilet bowl in her marigolds.

its more the presumption that the data is bias etc thats puzzling , because if the data does not support the equal balance for one reason or another does not mean its auto bias

tweddler · 14/11/2024 05:48

MrPickles001 · 14/11/2024 03:39

its more the presumption that the data is bias etc thats puzzling , because if the data does not support the equal balance for one reason or another does not mean its auto bias

These models tend to a amplify bias in the training data. If the training data is 70/30 one way, the output might be 99/1. This is partly a deliberate decision - since lots of the input data is low quality or nonsense, it's preferable to avoid reproducing features from the less-likely data. And partly an emergency property of the training process which isn't fully understood.

Also, the way the image generation works is that learned semantic features of the prompt are mapped to learned visual features of the image. It''s highly likely that the association between "cleaning the toilet" and "woman" takes place at the prompt embedding stage, not the visual stage. Similarly the connection between "man cleaning toilet" and "everything is depressing and wrong". If that's right, the bias comes from the text training data (including image captions) rather than the image data itself.

MarieDeGournay · 14/11/2024 12:04

Dear tweddler, I am both grateful for and impressed by your detailed technical explanation of some of the puzzling questions of AI images, for instance that the way the image generation works is that learned semantic features of the prompt are mapped to learned visual features of the ...

...oh look, the absolutely darlingest little furry creature doing something so so funny! and the fluffiest cat, like, ever! and a yummy cake!
Grin

QuietlyStorming · 14/11/2024 13:08

Just came across this thread. Was having a sh*t day and now am absolutely breathless with laughter. Thanks 🤣

PurpleSparkledPixie · 14/11/2024 13:24

"marlhmarlol".

Yep, that is the kind of drooly mumbled sound that came out of my mouth when I viewed those images. The AI is correct in this instance Blush🙊

MrPickles001 · 14/11/2024 13:30

bias within AI-generated imagery datasets stems from several interlinked factors that compound to shape the model’s outputs.

Primarily, these biases originate from demographic and contextual imbalances within the data sources, which often lack representational diversity, particularly in images depicting professional roles, social settings, or cultural symbols.

Most datasets are harvested from internet sources, such as social media and commercial platforms, which tend to reflect prevalent societal stereotypes and Western-centric norms.

This creates an inherent skew, where certain demographics, aesthetics, or contexts are overrepresented, while others are marginal or absent.

Additionally, cultural and socioeconomic biases embedded within these platforms introduce further distortions, as the imagery and language associated with specific groups or regions may be limited or disproportionately shaped by mainstream, often Westernized perspectives.

Compounding this, the training methodologies and model architectures employed—such as the prompt embedding mechanisms—can amplify these imbalances, reinforcing stereotypical associations and inadvertently perpetuating bias in outputs.

BobbyBiscuits · 14/11/2024 13:30

In India the cleaning of toilets as a profession is exclusively female. Men clean sewers etc but domestic toilet cleaning is always done by women. I guess that might be the case in some other countries too. So if you think about the population size, then the AI must have got it from there to an extent?
It's only in the last ten years toilet cleaning product/ kitchen cleaning stuff in adverts was ever used by men. The man used to be in a white coat, showing the woman this great product that she adores because her entire raison detre circles round a spotless lavatory. 🤣

HagsRule · 14/11/2024 14:11

MarieDeGournay · 13/11/2024 19:18

AI Thinks Men Can’t Clean Toilets…
in fairness, AI may have a point!

I have this theory of 'Acquired Male Inefficiency Syndrome', which involves men doing things so badly the first time they are asked to do it, that a nearby woman will lose patience and say :
'Ah here, give me that brush, it'd be quicker doing it myself!

and they'll never be expected to do that task again..😠

I can hear my late mother's voice saying that, the 'Ah here..' is totally herSmile

It is a thing. My late FIL did this. When asked to do the washing did it so shitly that MIL took over in exasperation. See also: cooking and of course, cleaning. Weaponised incompetence is what I call it. My mum had no time for my dad trying this and to be fair their childcare and cleaning duties were therefore pretty even. My mum was the higher earner and came home later than my dad so that meant he stepped up to get us from childminder and got our dinner etc. This was quite uncommon in the late 80s, early 90s. Which is depressing. My DH and I are pretty equal even though he grew up experiencing that v traditional parenting; his dad worked away earning money and his mum did everything else (and also worked too btw). I'm glad he saw that in a negative way and we are fairly equal. I'd say I do have higher cleaning standards though.

5475878237NC · 14/11/2024 15:16

HagsRule · 14/11/2024 14:11

It is a thing. My late FIL did this. When asked to do the washing did it so shitly that MIL took over in exasperation. See also: cooking and of course, cleaning. Weaponised incompetence is what I call it. My mum had no time for my dad trying this and to be fair their childcare and cleaning duties were therefore pretty even. My mum was the higher earner and came home later than my dad so that meant he stepped up to get us from childminder and got our dinner etc. This was quite uncommon in the late 80s, early 90s. Which is depressing. My DH and I are pretty equal even though he grew up experiencing that v traditional parenting; his dad worked away earning money and his mum did everything else (and also worked too btw). I'm glad he saw that in a negative way and we are fairly equal. I'd say I do have higher cleaning standards though.

What do you do if your husband saw that and thought "yeah that's what I want too!)?

HagsRule · 14/11/2024 15:58

Youthiswastedontheyoung · 13/11/2024 22:10

I asked my husband the other day why he never cleans the toilets at home. He looked at me genuinely confused and said: Why do you need to clean a toilet; you just pee and crap in it?"
Oh my.

DTB

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