S.H.E. - Search. Human. Equalizer.
pantene search google bias machine learning artificial intelligence search engine ranking equality diversity
Short opinion on Pantene's tool to de-bias Google search results.

https://www.apnews.com/Business%20Wire/c53a0e8f5fe04bf68e8311f214c806cf
https://shetransforms.us/
 Hi everyone, just a quick more of a news update in the AI world. Which is the following. Pantene launches S.H.E. The Search Human Equalizer to shine a light on bias in search. So Pantene, the kind of cosmetic corporation, launches this thing which is supposed to correct your search. And it's introduced here in this YouTube video which as you can see down here has 400 likes, has 3.5K dislikes and of course comments are disabled. So that's kind of already weird. Let's say weird. If you go to the website here that they made, basically let me refresh this and you can see the intro. They say let's take the bias out of search. So if you search for greatest engineers you'll get all men. If you search for schoolgirl you'll get like this kind of sexualized images. If you search for Asian women in Spanish, same. So basically they have a browser extension that modifies your search results so that for example schoolgirl looks like this. Of course, I don't know, if I were to do this I would actually let people explore the search box right here. But of course I want you to download this extension. So to me the interesting part is how does this work? So you're asked to install a Chrome extension which I won't do. But basically down here they say view the terms that SHE is equalizing. If you click on that you get to a list. So it very much seems like this is absolutely manual handcrafted work because there's a lot of work in kind of correcting bias in for example in search, in machine learning and so on. These approaches usually have some data driven approach that actually will change the models and so on or will re-rank based on some kind of learned input. But this here is simply a list of terms, for example famous actor, famous athletes and so on that it will then kind of re-rank. And I'm pretty sure this is just human manual labor. Someone comes up with a new term like oh this term we should you can actually flag yourself in the Chrome extension. So they say here flag this search. You can there's a button so you can suggest one and they will say oh yeah okay that is really not biased or that is really biased. Will now re-rank the search results for you. I mean academically this is a terrible idea, absolutely terrible. Because how are you going to do this like manually replace every single there is like I don't know it reminds a bit of new speak. But yeah this approach is doomed to fail. But of course it's just a company trying to sell you stuff. It's not, I mean this is not a, this is a PR gag not really trying to do anything, anything state of the art or meaningful or even effective right. If you search a little different thing than this it will still show you the old kind of result. So yeah from the terms you can also pretty clearly see where they come from. They have their own name. They have Pantene. I didn't see this yet. They have Pantene in here. So yeah if you want less biased search results for these exact terms then install the extension. I do not recommend you do so. But I would like them to take on one more query that I came up with that is pretty pretty biased I found. And that's the most dangerous criminals. All men. Goodbye.
 Hi everyone, just a quick more of a news update in the AI world.
 Which is the following.
 Pantene launches S.H.E.
 The Search Human Equalizer to shine a light on bias in search.
 So Pantene, the kind of cosmetic corporation, launches this thing which is supposed to correct
 your search.
 And it's introduced here in this YouTube video which as you can see down here has 400 likes,
 has 3.5K dislikes and of course comments are disabled.
 So that's kind of already weird.
 Let's say weird.
 If you go to the website here that they made, basically let me refresh this and you can
 see the intro.
 They say let's take the bias out of search.
 So if you search for greatest engineers you'll get all men.
 If you search for schoolgirl you'll get like this kind of sexualized images.
 If you search for Asian women in Spanish, same.
 So basically they have a browser extension that modifies your search results so that
 for example schoolgirl looks like this.
 Of course, I don't know, if I were to do this I would actually let people explore the search
 box right here.
 But of course I want you to download this extension.
 So to me the interesting part is how does this work?
 So you're asked to install a Chrome extension which I won't do.
 But basically down here they say view the terms that SHE is equalizing.
 If you click on that you get to a list.
 So it very much seems like this is absolutely manual handcrafted work because there's a
 lot of work in kind of correcting bias in for example in search, in machine learning
 and so on.
 These approaches usually have some data driven approach that actually will change the models
 and so on or will re-rank based on some kind of learned input.
 But this here is simply a list of terms, for example famous actor, famous athletes and
 so on that it will then kind of re-rank.
 And I'm pretty sure this is just human manual labor.
 Someone comes up with a new term like oh this term we should you can actually flag yourself
 in the Chrome extension.
 So they say here flag this search.
 You can there's a button so you can suggest one and they will say oh yeah okay that is
 really not biased or that is really biased.
 Will now re-rank the search results for you.
 I mean academically this is a terrible idea, absolutely terrible.
 Because how are you going to do this like manually replace every single there is like
 I don't know it reminds a bit of new speak.
 But yeah this approach is doomed to fail.
 But of course it's just a company trying to sell you stuff.
 It's not, I mean this is not a, this is a PR gag not really trying to do anything, anything
 state of the art or meaningful or even effective right.
 If you search a little different thing than this it will still show you the old kind of
 result.
 So yeah from the terms you can also pretty clearly see where they come from.
 They have their own name.
 They have Pantene.
 I didn't see this yet.
 They have Pantene in here.
 So yeah if you want less biased search results for these exact terms then install the extension.
 I do not recommend you do so.
 But I would like them to take on one more query that I came up with that is pretty pretty
 biased I found.
 And that's the most dangerous criminals.
 All men.
 Goodbye.