McHugh's Miscellany - Artificial Intelligence no friend to the ‘Irish man’ stereotype

I read with interest this week that EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum located in Dublin has uncovered a negative portrayal of Irish AI generated results that convey wildly inaccurate representation of an ‘Irish man’.

Having lived and worked in London, when the Troubles were still at its heights, not so much my face, but my voice was often the distinguishing factor, in whether you received more attention, than others. But more of that later! 

Now the Irish Emigration Museum is challenging negative and misleading Irish stereotypes

found in generative AI, with its latest campaign, Paddy ‘A.I.rishman’.

This campaign, they say, is a follow up to last summer’s ‘This is Not Us’, within which EPIC uncovered predictive search data that showed the many incorrect and misleading perceptions of the Irish which still prevail globally. 

According to EPIC they are now taking on Artificial Intelligence and the outdated, and often offensive, stereotypes that are generated from this particular technology.

They uncovered that when you prompt a popular AI image generator to show you an ‘Irish man’, the results were, without exception, outdated and extremely far removed from a modern-day understanding of ‘Irishness’. 

In countless tests, every generated image contained references to drinking, anger, aggression, or leprechaun-like styling. It’s these negative clichés that EPIC wants to call to account, they suggested.

In their new iteration of ‘This Is Not Us’, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum aims to confront these misinformed perceptions head-on, by using AI to demonstrate how the Irish are often the butt of the joke within pop culture. 

AI pulls data from across the internet and creates what it ‘thinks’ is the most accurate representation of a user’s prompts. You need look no further than this year’s Oscars or Saturday Night Live skits to see that cheap shots still get cheap laughs.

Aileesh Carew, CEO of the Museum said:

“While being Irish cannot possibly be summed up in a single image, we were surprised to find that AI generated images of the Irish are full of outdated stereotypes. 

At EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, we know that being Irish is a celebration that extends across the globe. We hope that this campaign will inspire people to look beyond stereotypes wherever they encounter them, and create meaningful conversations about the pitfalls and potentials of

AI and of course visit EPIC to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be Irish.”

Personally I applaud the work that the multi award winning museum is undertaking.

Back to my days in London and it was clear that the number of Black Mara vans ensconced out Irish frequented dancing or drinking emporiums was much greater than some of those frequented by the English themselves. 

In many years of reflection, that also extended to some of the work environments that I worked in and there was hardly a day went by when some reference was made to my nationality, even if it was just low grade and I was expected to see the funny side of the comment, as I was Irish.

I must add the caveat that in my time there, both as a student trying to earn fees for the following semester or my first corporate employment experiences or just meeting some of those that counted themselves very much English, they were the salt of the earth. The latter could sometimes change however, depending on what was leading the BBC news the previous evening. 

You see it right across the news sites now where click bait is tempting you in, with headlines that are so ridiculous, you are sneakily compelled to click and then fall down a rabbit hole, as you are spoon fed utter nonsense and in the end the story has little or no relevance to the headlines themselves.