What is it?
This is a neural network (yes! a real one! working, which I trained) running in the device before you. It was trained with about 290 of the ImageNet topics for categories of worker, such as “baker” or “landlord.”
Because the dataset is not in any way inclusive of the diversity of Earth’s inhabitants, any neural network naively trained from this data, as I have done, will incorporate inherent biases, such as assuming that people of particular skin tones or gender presentations are more or less likely to have each occupation.
I want to be very clear: I do not think this kind of product should be made. As a visual symbol of this, borrowing a page from PETA protestors, I threw red paint on the artwork. There is also pencilled “GIGO” graffiti near the piece, which refers to “garbage in, garbage out.”
About the Series
This is part of my “Algorithm” body of work:
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“Illegal in Illinois”
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“Morale is Mandatory (Algorithm Livery)”
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“Probing GauGAN2”
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“Feedback Loop”
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“Probing DALL-E Mini”
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“Probing ImageNet”
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“Snap Judgment”
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“Data Chains”
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“Print/Shred”
More details at “About Algorithms,” the companion site for this work.