Nigerian is not a race, it doesn’t need to be a race for this to be a racist trope. Reacting to this story with a Nigerian scam email joke is racist. As it is completely irrelevant to the topic being discussed and it is used to dismiss the claims made in the article.
If the Israeli government imposed a fine and then someone on here decided to respond with a joke on how much interest the Israeli’s would make on the fine or whether the fine would be paid in gold coins. That would be racist trope. Whether it happened in the past or not is not important.
It is up to you to remain educated, but I would be careful making Nigerian scam jokes especially around black people. If you want to say racist things, endeavor to do so in private.
The reason I wrote the piece was to reflect on personal feelings and experiences with respect to existing large scale technology platforms and how the current AI offerings might exhibit the same issues I have experienced.
I understand your point about the reason we tell people to speak to LLMs "like a human" has to do with functionality, but I don't think you can discount the push towards viewing these systems as human-like and more relatable, especially in the marketing and product applications (AI companions, customer service help et. al) both from large and small scale tech platforms. And regardless of whether the functionality requires you to interface with it like a human, doing so still has an non-negligible effect on you.
Also, when I refer to Silicon Valley, I am more so talking about the pervasive thinking and practices that are common and codified in the industry. The thing about the "bad things" you mention is not just that they were done in the past(they still happen), but that the underlying motivations that led to them in the first place still exist. Yes, Generative AI is a new frontier, but it is not immune from the motivations that have been present in the industry for decades.
I agree that I could have done better with regard to offering more insight about the tech itself, but I didn't want to write a technical article, I wanted something more personal.
Anyway, thanks for the read, and I appreciate the feedback.
I decided to write about AI, in light of the consequential changes to the tech landscape this past year, and I also wanted to reflect on some related feelings I have been experiencing.
If the Israeli government imposed a fine and then someone on here decided to respond with a joke on how much interest the Israeli’s would make on the fine or whether the fine would be paid in gold coins. That would be racist trope. Whether it happened in the past or not is not important.
It is up to you to remain educated, but I would be careful making Nigerian scam jokes especially around black people. If you want to say racist things, endeavor to do so in private.