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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

#301

Post by scythe »

timmg wrote: post #27
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…

As someone who also works at Google, I agree that there is a vocal minority who want Google to be a promoter of progressive values, but: I think you nay be exaggerating things here. I've never even heard of any controversy over the word "motherboard". I just did some internal searches. It seems to be a well-used word, both in code and in documentation. (I did a code search for both "motherboard" and "mainboard" and t…

"Allowlist" and "denylist" are sonically awkward. Why not "inlist" and "outlist"?

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

#302

Post by AlexandrB »

bombcar wrote: post #46
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…

Landlord gets hit from multiple sides; those who don't like that it contains "lord" which is a male term, those who don't like that landlords exist, and those who don't like that the concept of owning land exists.

> those who don't like that landlords exist, and those who don't like that the concept of owning land exists.

I think these two groups would prefer "landlord" over "proprietor" because "landlord" has a much more negative connotation and probably inspires a visceral reaction in anyone who's had a bad landlord. Only the "male" thing makes any sort of sense from a left wing POV.

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

#303

Post by cscurmudgeon »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #77
twobitshifter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On landlord I can’t think of a proper synonym. Property owner and proprietor are broader categories of what a landlord is. They don’t mean the person you’re paying rent to for your housing.

rentier - one who lives off the income of property or securities.

A landlord can still have a day job.

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

#304

Post by shadowgovt »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #275
mjburgess wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the leadership are aware of how toxic and repellent this culture is -- despite, i'd imagine, having no clear strategy to reform it.

Shareholders have to step up and get a leadership that can take care of it.

Google's owners have a majority. There is no real pressure shareholders can apply. This is by design.

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

#305

Post by MatteoFrigo »

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.

To be fair, the male/female nomenclature for connectors has been a mess for decades.

One old convention, mostly originating with radio-frequency connectors, is that the gender of the connector is the gender of its innermost contact. Thus, the plug of the common 2.5" and 2.1" connector of power supplies is technically female because the inner contact is a hole. The socket on the appliance has a pin in the middle and is technically male. When you try to buy one, half the time the part is labelled as male and the other half it is labelled as female.

But there is no problem bad enough that cannot be made worse by government. Years ago some US regulator didn't like the fact that people were plugging big radio antennas into wifi equipment, so they invented the "reverse-polarity" connector. What used to be a "SMA male" connector with a pin in the middle now is a "RP SMA male" connector with a hole in the middle. Here is a random link with a picture: http://cablesondemandblog.com/wordpress1/2014/05/05/reverse_... If you order this kind of connectors, now you have a 25% chance of getting what you need. One RP SMA male and a SMA female will mate together but not propagate any signals.

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

#306

Post by dvirsky »

itsyaboi wrote: post #41
cynicalkane wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire comment is a lie. Terms like "motherboard" are readily findable on Google's internal search. I could not find anything referencing a banned non-inclusive words policy in the employee policy guide. I have never heard of anything remotely resembling someone catching heat for saying "motherboard" or whatever. Source: I also work at Google.

Since you work at Google, maybe you can answer this: does internal tooling exist to flag occurrences of "bad" words in say, code reviews or shared documents?

Former Googler (until a couple of months ago). I've never seen anything like it, but maybe I just didn't use "bad" words in code? There were presubmit checks for typos and such. Also, IIRC I asked people in code/design reviews to rename white/black lists to allow/deny lists, but it might have just been in docs.

I did get an angry code review response from a fellow engineer once, after writing in a commit description (not the actual code) something like "this is a stupid fix but it stops the linter from bitching about so and so" - for using both the words "stupid" and "bitch". I guess the second one was on point but referring to my own work as "stupid" is pretty okay in my book. I would never ever describe anyone else's work as such.

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

#308

Post by positus »

skrbjc wrote: post #210
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…

But that's implying that only mothers give birth, and erases those who don't identify as mothers who give birth. That's how I understand their thinking, at least. I agree with you and think anyone who is offended by motherboard is silly. I'm sure it was never even anyone that was actually offended, but a group of people sitting down and looking at any and every word that has any type of gender connotation and saying…

Ontology will always and forever trump autonomy.

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

#309

Post by quenix »

knorker wrote: post #156
luxuryballs wrote: post #97

Since when is black and white primarily a racial thing anyways? It seems a little inverted, like a black flag or a black mark on an account, it’s not like it’s called “negrolist”, black and white are colors before they are slang for race/culture. Maybe instead of neutering the dictionary we could try a different angle and quit lumping people into “white” or “black”? Some people are Kenyan, Irish, Nigerian, German, no…

I think they're trying to change language to disassociate "black" with negative meaning. Which is going to be very hard, because the reason for the association is from black being the unknown. It's the night that hides the predators. It's the shadow where the enemy hides. It's where you don't want to put your foot in case there are spiders or a sharp rock. Humans are afraid of the dark. I've not even heard of being a…

This makes sense to me. Why is it downvoted?

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

#310

Post by humanistbot »

Auracle wrote: post #251
duxup wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the challenges with moderation teams like that or similar is that the folks who REALLY want to do that job .. are the folks who absolutely should NOT be doing it.

For anyone reading this, I volunteer. My moderation level would be based on words that were considered bad in the year 2005. I won’t have to do much work and you still get to say that you have someone that’s doing the job. Win-win.

Ah, the culture war version of the famous Douglas Adams quote about technology:

"1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

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