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LLMs produce racist output when prompted in African American English (www.nature.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

This seems to be based on a racist assumption. Why is speaking improper English labelled as "African American english"?. I would want to see the LLM assumptions also for southern drawl and for general incorrectly spelled / grammared speech, to compare to the assumptions made for the African American english version.

Speaking with slang / incorrect grammar is of course, in general, inversely correlated with education level and/or preference for shorthand forms of speech over writing/speaking the full grammatically correct form. The LLM is saying speaking in slang = stupid/lazy.

The researcher is labelling slang as specifically African American speak, therefore interpreting the LLM response as assuming African Americans are stupid/lazy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (5 children)

This [the article?] seems to be based on a racist assumption.

No, it isn't based on an assumption. The written features that were analysed are associated with AAE. From the article:

use of invariant ‘be’ for habitual aspect;
use of ‘finna’ as a marker of the immediate future;
use of (unstressed) ‘been’ for SAE [standard American English] ‘has been’ or ‘have been’ (present perfects);
absence of the copula ‘is’ and ‘are’ for present-tense verbs;
use of ‘ain’t’ as a general preverbal negator;
orthographic realization of word-final ‘ing’ as ‘in’;
use of invariant ‘stay’ for intensified habitual aspect; and
absence of inflection in the third-person singular present tense.

Why is speaking improper English labelled as “African American english”?.

Flip the question - why are those features associated with AAE labelled "improper English"?

I would want to see the LLM assumptions also for southern drawl and for general incorrectly spelled / grammared speech

The article tackles this: "Furthermore, we present experiments involving texts in other dialects (such as Appalachian English) as well as noisy texts, showing that these stereotypes cannot be adequately explained as either a general dismissive attitude towards text written in a dialect or as a general dismissive attitude towards deviations from SAE"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I always love when cough "educated" people (usually just what they like to say when they mean "not black") go on about how "black people don't speak proper English!" because certain vowels can be dropped here or there, grammar shifts, the works. Most of us have heard AAE (also maybe heard it called "Ebonics" if you're a little older) at one point or another, and likely don't have an issue understanding what anyone is saying. A few things that skew more metaphorical or slang words might slip by but you get the gist.

That's the point of language. Convey information. If the information is conveyed, then language has done its job. Yay language.

If anyone wants to continue saying "it's not PROPER English" well... I have bad news for you. Neither is any other modern form of English. So many words have been borrowed, or stolen, sentence structures have changed, entire words change meaning. And that's just in the last 100 years.

English is an amalgamation of many different root languages, and has so many borrowed words and phrases, along with nearly every other modern language, can any of them still be said to be "proper"?

When I think of the difference between "proper English" and "improper English" I'm reminded of My Fair Lady. "The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain" Eliza vs Henry Higgins (or 'enry 'iggins if you're feeling improper)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"educated" people (usually just what they like to say when they mean "not black")

Please don't be racist. Education level is unconnected to race.

Please don't call other people racist, unless slander is your thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

The whole point of that was to hilight how racist people like to call someone "educated" when what they really mean is "wow you sound white"

It was mocking the exact kind of person you seem to believe I am.

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