#Graduation #AI #fail seems to be a recurring theme lately

[dukeduke@mastodon.social]

@lemgandi @benroyce Florizona.

[ashmire@pagan.plus]

@PeterLG @benroyce I noticed today that my local grocery store has started doing announcements this way. Not even pre-recorded advertising announcements they'd have to repeat regularly, but impromptu things, too. It makes no sense to me even there, but for a serious and meaningful occasion like a graduation it's terrible. What next, AI eulogies for your funeral?

[mausmalone@mastodon.social]

@benroyce the sad part is that the faculty and staff are proud of their graduates. Surely there would be volunteers to read the names if they only asked.

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@Ashmire @PeterLG

Don't give them ideas!

[mast0d0nphan@beige.party]

@benroyce Christ on 67 bicycles, this is infuriating.

"Just take pictures bro I promise you'll be able to remember this shitty moment bro just upload the pics to Insta bro you'll have something to remember us shitting on your graduation by bro plz bro just do AI bro"

[wil@beige.party]

@RantingCanuck I was assuming it's a case of "we paid for it, we have to figure out something to do with it." @benroyce

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@benroyce

Gentle people, when some wanker who has made billions of dollars lying to investors, employers and customers tells you that you should use his crappy technology for a simple task that you already know how to do very well, just tell him to fuck right off.

[klappspatack@troet.cafe]

@benroyce this is so lousy

[scunneen@mastodon.social]

@benroyce The rationalization for this is that the AI was trained on a variety of names from different cultures and so wouldn't mess upthe names of immigrant student, whereas it would not be practical for a single faculty member to memorize the pronunciation of the names of all 1000+ students in the graduating class. What I guess is that a white salesperson told a committee full of white people that students of color wanted this technology and the committee never bothered to ask said students.

[alexhelvetica@toot.cat]

@benroyce My university student file had multiple typed up phonetic pronunciations of my (dead) last name, because they knew how important that is to their students.

I assume the teaching team noted them, because they're really good attempts. It showed they hadn't pulled them from a name pronunciation database from who-knows-where, because I highly doubt my family pronounces it in the correct German way.

I'm sure that university must have had something similar, and I fail to see how an AI agent could have reduced costs in a perceivable way.

They still had a speaker on the stage who could announce the student's names, someone to manage and monitor the stream and someone to direct the students to stage, who also could direct the speaker and stream monitor if someone is missing from the queue.

[wolphin8@mastodon.social]

@benroyce If my name was missed, I'd be demanding the money paid for the graduation event back, as they failed to provide a key part of the service to me (my recognition). I would word the demand as a consequence of their failure to make sure the product was correct.
People think computers cannot make mistakes. Computers make mistakes all the time; that is why there is error correction in almost everything. BUT they are only as good as the data going in, and AI is extremely flawed data.