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74 Emory L.J. Online 1 (2024-2025)

handle is hein.journals/emyon74 and id is 1 raw text is: 










WE   ARE   THE   AI  PROBLEM


                                Tonja Jacobi

                                Matthew  Sag*

                                ABSTRACT

    This Essay describes what we  call the Black Nazi Problem, a shorthand
for  the  sometimes-jarring  text and   images  produced   by  AI, from   the
incongruous    such as  female  Indian  popes   to the  outrageous   such  as
depicting minorities as their own historical oppressors, including Black Nazis.
These  images were the result of overzealous efforts by AI developers to correct
for  a lack  of diverse representation in  the training data  used to  create
Generative  AI models.  The overrepresentation of white, fully-abled, Western
men  in images of high status categories, and the invisibility of women, people of
color, and the disabled, except in low status categories, and the almost complete
absence  of realistic, non-sexualized images ofwomen, plagues all text-to-image
AI models. We  argue that both the striking lack of diverse representation in the
training data and the sometimes clumsy overcompensation for that bias lay bare
social problems,  rather than technological ones. The problem  is not with AI
technology   as  such  the  problem   is us:  AI  training data  reflects an
accumulation  of historical biases and our current inequalities as well. There are
four important elements about the creation process of AI that explain the Black-
Nazi  problem  and  expose broader  problems  about society: our history, the
structure  of  society, our  sometimes  contradictory  aspirations, and   the
aggregating process ofAI  image production. Understanding those aspects of the
AI  creation process reveals that AI's foibles are a symptom  of our ongoing
struggle with the ramifications of past inequality and the difficulty of balancing
inherently  conflicting goals, such as  aspirational diversity and historical
accuracy. We  draw out cultural, technological, policy, and legal implications of
this problem. Altogether, the Black Nazi Problem gives us a window into other
intractable socio-technical problems we need to confront in AL



    * Tonja Jacobi is a Professor of Law and Sam Nunn Chair in Legal Ethics & Professionalism at Emory
University Law School (tonja.jacobi@emory.edu); Matthew Sag is a Professor of Law in Artificial Intelligence,
Machine Learning and Data Science at Emory University Law School; msag@emory.edu. We thank Annemarie
Bridy, Orly Lobel, Blake Reid, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, and Pam Samuelson for their thoughtful comments and
suggestions.

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