Ideas of India Sunny Rai on Using Large Language Models to Understand the Depiction of Shame and Pride in Bollywood versus Hollywood
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Sep 25, 2025 Sunny Rai, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, explores the contrasting portrayals of shame and pride in Bollywood and Hollywood films. She discusses how Bollywood emphasizes family honor while Hollywood focuses on individual accountability. Rai shares her research methodology involving vocabulary analysis and Large Language Models to dissect these themes. Additionally, she highlights challenges like the limitations of subtitle translations and the implications of cultural biases in AI training, suggesting broader applications for her findings.
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Motivation From A Nephew's YouTube Viewing
- Sunny Rai got the idea after watching her five-year-old nephew consume videos with harmful stereotypes.
- She wanted a system to detect social norms in media so parents could filter harmful content for kids.
Sanctions Reveal Hidden Social Norms
- Observing sanctions (praise or punishment) reveals social norms because reactions teach acceptable behavior.
- Rai used sanctions as a measurable signal to train models to detect cultural norms.
Hollywood vs Bollywood Norms
- Hollywood films emphasize self-accountability and competence when depicting shame and pride.
- Bollywood films emphasize family honor and gender roles, reflecting collective social values.