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Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

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Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#551

Post by nonameiguess »

shp0ngle wrote: post #334
user3939382 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going to play this game, I think dissuading people from using "mother" in the example of "motherboard" is offensive. Mothers are the source of human life on earth, and in that capacity are revered and honored. When we say motherboard, we're making an analogy that suggests the board's significance and universal connection to everything. To discourage the term as an analogy for things that are a universal sour…

The official PC term is now “birthing person”, “birthing people”, “people giving birth” and similar. Think of that what you will.

That can't possibly be true. If nothing else, it's erasure of adoptive parents, or mothers who didn't give birth, among which gay married couples are overrepresented. I realize there is infighting and factionalism even within minority communities, but come on, this stuff doesn't ring true. I've never heard someone called a birthing person outside of a joke.

For what it's worth, in support of the original comment's claim, I just dug around the Pixelbook documentation all over the place and I can't find any mention of the motherboard. But it doesn't seem they renamed it to "mainboard" or "birthing person board." They just dropped it from the specification completely and don't tell you anything about what kind of motherboard you're getting.

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#552

Post by foofoo4u »

gorwell wrote: post #112

This is straight out of Brave New World where the word "mother" was viewed as obscene.

Check out this video uploaded just recently: [Health department refuses to define ‘woman’ in Senate Estimates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX_1QNXgjDM). Australia's own health department struggle and eventually refuse to answer the simple question. Look at how uncomfortable they are with such an innocuous request.

On similar trends, we are seeing institutions such as the ACLU post tweets like this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1439259891064004610?s=20 . It's a tweet of a quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But the ACLU has decided to replace the word "women" with "people".

So yes, we are moving into a brave new world.

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#553

Post by nullc »

mateo1 wrote: post #469
nostromo wrote: post #31

Who was asking for Woke Clippy? Is Google just bored and completely out of ideas? They seem increasingly disconnected with what their users actually want.

If you read the article, it is clear who their prospective clients are. Big corporations pretending not to be racist. The next iteration will be a corporate-speak translator. As annoying as a woke clippy might be, at times I realize that we're lucky we don't live in a racist clippy alt reality. "Would you like to expand all mentions of "n-word"?"

> I realize that we're lucky we don't live in a racist clippy alt reality

If someone is being racist, wouldn't we arguably be better off if they used language that made it transparent to the reader-- rather than disguised it with the magic of search and replace?

Real prejudice can't be erased by search and replace but it can be made more plausibly deniable.

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#554

Post by cloutchaser »

krastanov wrote: post #23
mgraczyk wrote: post #9

In the article they use the example of "Motherboard" and "Landlord" and seem to suggest that these are areas where the Google AI is making mistakes or being overly strict. As a Google employee expressing my own opinion and observations of company culture, I can say that these are 100% not mistakes. Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real world that they believe it is the duty of Google Docs to ch…

I am incredulous at the "mother" to "birthing person" requirement. I have seen one or two people with such prescriptive views on language but the vast majority of people I know consider it ridiculous. And I am in an incredibly "woke" social bubble.

Because saying this stuff is akin to vowing your allegiance to the party in authoritarian regimes.

Or repeating the cult dogma in a cult.

This isn’t about rationality or what is ridiculous. It is about proving that you are part of a group. And to prove that people have done insane things for thousands of years. Much worse than calling a mother a birthing parent tbh, but it shows you what direction we are headed.

And interestingly this seems to apply to corporations too. They too (probably because of management), want to demonstrate they are part of a group/cult.

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#555

Post by Tao331 »

> Cutting phrases like “whitelist/blacklist” ...out of our vocabulary... addresses years of habitual bias in tech terminology

Vice, you are not helping.

Unless your ancestors had lands confiscated or graves desecrated in a manner you find unjust during the Stuart Restoration, you have no standing to complain about "blacklist".

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#556

Post by nullc »

gdulli wrote: post #29

I spent many years in the bluest corner of a very blue state. But still I can't imagine any objection to the word "landlord" outside of (1) a right wing attempt to satirize the left, (2) a Google product brainstorming meeting, or (3) a rare sincere outlier or concern troll. In any of those cases I don't think this is necessary. That said, if the word "landlord" organically fell out of favor and out of usage to be rep…

> (1) a right wing attempt to satirize the left

It's hard not to secretly suspect that some of these things arise that way-- satire that is so spot on that it gets adopted as the truth.

> and out of usage to be replaced by something else I wouldn't care

Fundamentally that's why language bullying works-- it doesn't matter what words are used so long as the communicating parties understand each other. Not only does it mean that it's not worth it to fight back, it makes anyone who does fight back against it look automatically suspect.

The same is true for a lot of other bullying: ignoring that its bullying deprives it of its power. Or, at least, it denies it of it's power until it doesn't.

But do we want to live in a world where our language is constantly being rewritten-- at a non-zero cost-- by bullies (and their automation)? Reasonable people could debate it.

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#557

Post by tomp »

madamelic wrote: post #166
olalonde wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when GitHub stopped using "master" for the default branch because it was somehow offensive.

My opinion: `main` is better. It's shorter, it's more descriptive, and costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive. It's pretty much an all around win.

> costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive

But there is a cost. You're losing a battle in the war of free speech vs Orwellian thought control.

The woke (an offshoot of last-wave feminism, currently promoted mainly by the control-left strain of the Democratic party) are lying; they're not actually offended, they're just using that as an excuse (propaganda) and as an emotional appeal, to get you to agree to their arguments, and cede power to them. This is most obvious with "Latinx" which is pushed by white journalists & activists but which isn't even supported by the overwhelming majority of Latinos and Latinas in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx

Don't believe me? Listen to what they (the woke) say themselves!

> I wanted to start by focusing on the obvious one, Its harder for them to object to just one to start with, then once they admit the logic, we can expand the list

from https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=4450

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#558

Post by elihu »

dekhn wrote: post #40
mgraczyk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the banned words list, I can share a link internally if you want.

We're sure it's in a List, but the point is that the List is not uniformly enforced, and "motherboard->mainboard" definitely seems like one to go to bat against because it Doesn't Make Sense to get rid of it.

Does "motherboard" even make sense as a term? It's not like a motherboard gives birth to little baby boards that eventually grow up to be mother and father boards of their own. It's just one of those weird words we accept because it's been part of a shared vocabulary for so long. I don't particularly see any harm in assigning a gender role to a hardware device, but I don't see anything is particularly gained either. "Mainboard" is fine.

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#559

Post by canadaduane »

mattkrause wrote: post #500
user3939382 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going to play this game, I think dissuading people from using "mother" in the example of "motherboard" is offensive. Mothers are the source of human life on earth, and in that capacity are revered and honored. When we say motherboard, we're making an analogy that suggests the board's significance and universal connection to everything. To discourage the term as an analogy for things that are a universal sour…

What about a motherboard is specifically maternal?

I've always associated motherboards with motherships--the larger thing in charge of making all the other little things behave well together.

Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

#560

Post by stefan_ »

mgraczyk wrote: post #141
brobinson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: what do you do internally for "male" and "female" connectors?

That one is in the public list. https://developers.google.com/style/word-list You're supposed to use "plug" and "socket" instead.

Haha jesus no wonder they added the "AI-powered" hints because who the fuck can be expected to keep track of all this nonsense?

> hang, hung

> Don't use to refer to a computer or system that is not responding [..] see Avoid unnecessarily violent language.

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