Apple speech-to-text momentarily replaces the word "racist" with "trump" - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 07:13:50 am
content: I know this topic is politically charged but i'm more interested in how this could happen. The technical code and engineering side of things.How likely is this to happen naturally? My assumption is that if Apple is using some sort of AI to convert speech to text, then the two words might be close to interchangeable to the algorithm because the data set, that trained the AI, includes them being used in close proximity and in similar contexts?Here's a video about it for reference:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wND_BqWWoFYThe current theory is that some rogue engineer/programmer sneaked this one into the release version of the software. A bad apple, so to speak (sorry i had to).But how easy would it be for a single person to sneak some code in? What kind of approval process does apple use for their software deployment?Or was the whole team (or large enough part of it) in on it and approved this code knowing exactly what it does. Perhaps they wanted it to be an "easter egg" type deal but made it far too obvious?People assume many things because this involves a prominent political figure being called a bad word, but if we put those biases away, then what was the mechanism that allowed this to happen?Phonetically the two words are nowhere near the same but could this be an AI version of the "green beetle=brainstorm" effect?

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 10:29:48 am
content: Here's another example:Source:https://nypost.com/2024/07/28/us-news/google-omitting-trump-assassination-from-autocomplete-feature/QuoteI also searched on it without relying on autocomplete and got nothing from Google for several days. Then Google had some lame excuse about not covering political events.Rogue programmers or corporate biases? The Google example seems corporate bias. I suspect there had to be at least a little corporate involvement and "plausible deniability" in the Apple example.

author: NE666
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 10:43:42 am
content: Quote from: Refrigerator on February 26, 2025, 07:13:50 amYou think they might rotten to the core?

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 11:57:23 am
content: Quote from: NE666 on February 26, 2025, 10:43:42 amApple is a very large company, so there is a proportionally larger chance for bad actors.Where a smaller company may have one or two, apple might have 10 or 20. Managers can be the culprit too.A single manager might have 50 engineers under them, so their decisions hold that much more power.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 01:47:00 pm
content: Quote from: Refrigerator on February 26, 2025, 11:57:23 ambut large companies usually have a much more rigid development so code usually doen't end up at customers unless it has passed many steps involving many people

author: Bryn
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 07:12:28 pm
content: Saw this on Bluesky earlier on... bloody hilarious, if not rather accurate

author: RJSV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 07:21:36 pm
content: First instinct I have is to accept OP's opening statement, that there isn't conspiracy to be unfair (by putting RACIST label), but to remember the old saying:'The simple explanations are often best.'That meaning that the AI viewed the two in close in text, and simply repeated that way when asked. I suppose that could indicate the AI can't (yet) understand the huge amounts of nuance.That meaning that the AI can't perceive that the shit is flying hard and fast, and so is taking the smears as 'common sentiment'.Good thing we humans still can subject that to a filter, moving on in about a half-second. So, in total maybe not much harm done.However, it's the gaps or emissions that can be applied, when voicing objections.(Those are mentioned in the original post as well.)What went missing, in autocompletes I've observed, was things dealing with HUNTER, sex, crack pipe, abandoned daughter,...that sort. Yeah those little specks of dirt didn't show up so well!I think I had been testing things like :'HUNTER INDICTE', in expectation that the gun possession charge was going to be autocompleted, but nope kind of shocking, really, the amounts of track-able mis-deeds and manipulated results...It's misin-dis-dis-mis information, performed by omissions of search results.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 11:51:30 pm
content: Why not link to a proper source:https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/apple-says-its-fixing-transcription-glitch-that-transcribes-racist-as-trump/Anyway, political thread, already filled with conspiracy theory, hopefully locked soon.

author: RJSV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2025, 03:08:24 am
content: Actually, the OP seemed to give room for both sides of possible argument, and fairly made his decision, rather than jumping straight to conclusions. I think Apple got a fair examination and passed.No 'conspiracy theory' no false accusation, so can we just let folks READ.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2025, 03:20:24 am
content: Quote from: thm_w on February 26, 2025, 11:51:30 pmWhat? Sounds as if youlikethe idea of threads being locked. Fan of censorship much? or just too thin-skinned to either join in or STFU?

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2025, 04:22:50 pm
content: When making this thread i made it clear that i know there is potential for it to go political by highlighting how politically tense this topic may be.My hope was that we can acknowledge this political component and put it away for a moment to discuss the technical side, while reserving political talk for those occasions when you've had too much to drink on your night out.The more i think of it the more likely it may seem to me that this might just be sample bias in the AI or whatever neural network is used to decode audio to text.Regardless of what data set is used, if it's anti trump it may have "Trump is racist" and it it's pro Trump, then it may say "Trump is not racist".But both samples have "trump" and "Racist" in the same sentence and similar context.A company like Apple might lean towards feeding their AI more "politically correct" content to keep themselves more "politically aligned" and drama free.I believe content that pushes for political correctness may be more critical of trump, as they are of everyone else in general. But i digress.I think the large amount of data that companies bulk-feed to their AI algorithms makes it hard to validate that data for bias and so can poison the AI without a way to check.Large neural networks are not human-readable, unless you are some god, so there's no way to find any false/misleading/biased associations.So from a large amount of training data, that is near impossible to humanly verify, it basically encrypts all that data within a neural network, which is not human readable, which in turn actually makes it easy to create something that can slide right through any QA, because nobody is going to check every word combination in every language and every accent to verify that the algorithm doesn't generate something controversial.

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2025, 07:08:18 pm
content: Quote from: Refrigerator on February 28, 2025, 04:22:50 pmIf that theory is correct, try the term "president" and see if Apple auto-completes with Trump. Moreover, if that were the explanation why didn't Apple say so, instead of calling it a bug?

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2025, 10:51:28 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on February 27, 2025, 03:20:24 amNo, I'm a fan of discussing technology, there are 1,000 other forums and sites you can discuss your pet political theories on, there are very few other high quality EE discussion sites.The second post in this thread is a completely technologically unrelated rant about suspected political bias. Stick to the tech: does apple use AI speech recognition at all? They say "speech model", does anyone have details if it is AI trained, etc.In terms of options, you have what Apple claimed, and the possibility of a rogue employee poisoning the code/data:QuoteEither one is possible. If you want to discuss how its impossible (code reviews etc.) or possible, go for it.