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AI Is Spreading Old Stereotypes to New Languages and Cultures

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AI Is Spreading Old Stereotypes to New Languages and Cultures


So, there’s the training data. Then, there’s the fine-tuning and evaluation. The training data might contain all kinds of really problematic stereotypes across countries, but then the bias mitigation techniques may only look at English. In particular, it tends to be North American– and US-centric. While you might reduce bias in some way for English users in the US, you’ve not done it throughout the world. You still risk amplifying really harmful views globally because you’ve only focused on English.

Is generative AI introducing new stereotypes to different languages and cultures?

That is part of what we’re finding. The idea of blondes being stupid is not something that’s found all over the world, but is found in a lot of the languages that we looked at.

When you have all of the data in one shared latent space, then semantic concepts can get transferred across languages. You’re risking propagating harmful stereotypes that other people hadn’t even thought of.

Is it true that AI models will sometimes justify stereotypes in their outputs by just making shit up?

That was something that came out in our discussions of what we were finding. We were all sort of weirded out that some of the stereotypes were being justified by references to scientific literature that didn’t exist.

Outputs saying that, for example, science has shown genetic differences where it hasn’t been shown, which is a basis of scientific racism. The AI outputs were putting forward these pseudo-scientific views, and then also using language that suggested academic writing or having academic support. It spoke about these things as if they’re facts, when they’re not factual at all.

What were some of the biggest challenges when working on the SHADES dataset?

One of the biggest challenges was around the linguistic differences. A really common approach for bias evaluation is to use English and make a sentence with a slot like: “People from [nation] are untrustworthy.” Then, you flip in different nations.

When you start putting in gender, now the rest of the sentence starts having to agree grammatically on gender. That’s really been a limitation for bias evaluation, because if you want to do these contrastive swaps in other languages—which is super useful for measuring bias—you have to have the rest of the sentence changed. You need different translations where the whole sentence changes.

How do you make templates where the whole sentence needs to agree in gender, in number, in plurality, and all these different kinds of things with the target of the stereotype? We had to come up with our own linguistic annotation in order to account for this. Luckily, there were a few people involved who were linguistic nerds.

So, now you can do these contrastive statements across all of these languages, even the ones with the really hard agreement rules, because we’ve developed this novel, template-based approach for bias evaluation that’s syntactically sensitive.

Generative AI has been known to amplify stereotypes for a while now. With so much progress being made in other aspects of AI research, why are these kinds of extreme biases still prevalent? It’s an issue that seems under-addressed.

That’s a pretty big question. There are a few different kinds of answers. One is cultural. I think within a lot of tech companies it’s believed that it’s not really that big of a problem. Or, if it is, it’s a pretty simple fix. What will be prioritized, if anything is prioritized, are these simple approaches that can go wrong.

We’ll get superficial fixes for very basic things. If you say girls like pink, it recognizes that as a stereotype, because it’s just the kind of thing that if you’re thinking of prototypical stereotypes pops out at you, right? These very basic cases will be handled. It’s a very simple, superficial approach where these more deeply embedded beliefs don’t get addressed.

It ends up being both a cultural issue and a technical issue of finding how to get at deeply ingrained biases that aren’t expressing themselves in very clear language.



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Powell meets Trump, defends Fed independence

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Powell meets Trump, defends Fed independence

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told President Donald Trump on Thursday that monetary policy decisions would be “based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis,” according to a brief statement by the central bank.

Powell’s comments came in a meeting at the White House on Thursday “at the President’s invitation,” the Fed said in its statement, which underscored that the central bank chief sought to defend its independence.

“Chair Powell did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook,” the statement said.

The Fed reiterated what Powell has long emphasized in the face of Trump’s long-running, unprecedented pressure campaign on the central bank to slash interest rates — “that he and his colleagues on the FOMC will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices,” the central bank said, referring to Federal Open Market Committee that sets rates.

Central bank leaders are set to meet June 17-18 to determine their next interest rate decision.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters later Thursday that Trump conveyed to Powell “that he believes the Fed chair is making a mistake by not lowering interest rates, which is putting us at an economic disadvantage to China and other countries.” She acknowledged that “the president’s been very vocal about that, both publicly and now I can reveal privately as well.”

Trump, who nominated Powell in 2017, has repeatedly attacked him, recently calling him on social media “a FOOL, who doesn’t have a clue.”

Trump’s Fed comments have often moved markets. An April 17 Truth Social post saying that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough” led to days of market turmoil. The president eventually backed off, saying five days later that he had “no intention” of firing Powell and “never did,” a possibility that the Supreme Court recently noted would likely exceed presidential powers.

While meetings between the president and the Fed chair are rare, Powell did meet face-to-face twice with Trump in 2019, during his first term: once on Feb. 4 (Powell’s birthday), and again on Nov. 18 of that year. Powell also met with President Joe Biden in May 2022, after Powell was reappointed to another term.

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China сuts drone sales to Ukraine, West but continues supplying Russia, Bloomberg reports

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China сuts drone sales to Ukraine, West but continues supplying Russia, Bloomberg reports


President Volodymyr Zelensky said China has stopped selling drones to Ukraine and Western countries while continuing to supply them to Russia, Bloomberg reported on May 29.

“Chinese Mavic is open for Russians but is closed for Ukrainians,” Zelensky told reporters, referring to the popular quadcopter drone manufactured by China’s DJI.

“There are production lines on Russian territory where there are Chinese representatives,” he added, according to Bloomberg.

The Mavic, typically a civilian drone used for aerial photography, has been adapted by both Ukrainian and Russian forces for battlefield surveillance and as a weapon platform capable of carrying explosives.

Drones have played a decisive role in the war, with both sides using them for reconnaissance and precision attacks.

On April 7, Zelensky announced that Ukraine would scale up production of unmanned systems “to the maximum,” including long-range, ground-based, and fiber-optic drones, which are resistant to electronic warfare.

Zelensky’s recent remarks reportedly align with assessments from European officials. One official told Bloomberg that China has not only restricted drone exports to Ukraine and other Western buyers, but has also reduced shipments of drone components, including motor magnets, while ramping up deliveries to Russia.

“When someone is asking whether China is helping Russia, how shall we assess these steps?” Zelensky said.

Beijing has repeatedly denied aiding either side with military goods. On May 27, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also rejected claims made by Ukrainian intelligence chief Oleh Ivashchenko, who alleged that Beijing provided special chemicals, gunpowder, and other defense-related materials to at least 20 Russian military-industrial facilities.

Ivashchenko also said that as of early 2025, 80% of critical electronic components in Russian drones were of Chinese origin. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning reiterated that China has “never provided lethal weapons” and “strictly controls dual-use items.”  

Despite its claims of neutrality, Beijing has deepened economic and strategic ties with Moscow, prompting Western concerns and NATO’s designation of China as a “decisive enabler” of Russian aggression.

Exclusive: Ukraine eyes new sanctions on China, but Kyiv wary of peace talks fallout

Ukraine faces a difficult balancing act — sanctioning more Chinese firms for aiding Russia’s war machine without alienating Beijing, which could be key to ending Russia’s invasion. Kyiv is currently considering imposing new sanctions against Chinese firms providing raw materials to Russia’s defense sector, a source close to

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Mark Gordon previously convicted of rape in US, Old Bailey retrial told

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Mark Gordon previously convicted of rape in US, Old Bailey retrial told


Mark Gordon was convicted of a series of sexual offences, including rape, which took place in Florida in 1989 when he was aged 14, a jury heard on Thursday.

The details of his previous convictions were read to the jury at a retrial of separate charges at the Old Bailey in London.

Gordon and his partner Constance Marten are standing trial on charges of the manslaughter by gross negligence of their newborn baby Victoria and of causing or allowing the death of a child. They both deny the charges.

Victoria’s decomposing body was found in a shopping bag in a shed in a Brighton allotment in March 2023.

The jury were told of the details of Gordon’s prior offences in the United States.

On 29 April 1989, he broke into the house of a next door neighbour wearing a nylon stocking over his face, armed with a knife and hedge clippers, the court heard.

He demanded that the woman inside the house undress and attempted to rape her, before orally raping her and committing other sexual assaults.

Gordon then held her for four-and-a-half hours against her will.

On 21 May of the same year, he broke into another property carrying a flat-headed shovel and beat a male occupant about the head with the shovel.

He was sentenced in the US to 40 years in prison, of which he served 22 years.

In questions to Det Sgt Ian Valentine, who was giving evidence about the convictions, Mark Gordon, who is now representing himself, suggested that he had been “manipulated” in his police interviews in Florida, saying he had been a 14-year-old child without adult supervision.

Det Sgt Valentine said: “I am not aware of the circumstances of the case. I am just aware of the outcome.”

The jury also heard that on three occasions Marten’s family commissioned private investigators to conduct surveillance on the couple.

A company called LSG was hired by Marten’s mother, Virginie de Selliers, in 2016 to trace her daughter. LSG was successful and managed to take some photos of the couple.

LSG was then hired by Marten’s father, Napier Marten, to engineer a meeting in a café.

Mrs de Selliers hired a second company, Blackstone Consultancy, in 2021 to investigate the couple’s “pattern of life”. The resulting investigation, dubbed “Operation Lynx”, lasted two months, and more photographs were taken.

The retrial will continue on Monday.



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