We Got That Viral Photo Algorithm to Say Some Deranged Shit About the 2020 Democrats

At this point, we all know that a life on the internet means that our information—from our browsing history to our faces—is being used by entities much larger and scarier and more faceless than ourselves. Very cool! Worth it! We also know that the technology used to sort such data (aka algorithms) is often quite reductive and wonky. Also very cool!

Now, a tool called ImageNet Roulette is showing us just how reductive and wonky those classifications can be. It was shared on Twitter yesterday and naturally, things really snowballed from there:

The site, which describes itself as “a provocation designed to help us see into the ways that humans are classified in machine learning systems,” has already dragged our colleagues at Jezebel, while our friends at Lifehacker found out just how problematic algorithms like these can be. Here at Splinter, we decided to turn the camera outward…toward the 2020 Democratic candidates. We chose recent photos and tried to be fair(ish) in the shots we picked. For better or worse, the results did not disappoint.

Bernie Sanders:

A different image of Bernie returned the word “biographer.” Bernie: a man of history and a rock god!

Pete Buttigieg:

Lmao. I was thinking more “bellboy,” but hotelman works.