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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

#371

Post by foofoo4u »

jedimastert wrote: post #78
kache_ wrote: post #22

I've been privy to people trying to ban words like "whitelabel" at my company. Thankfully, management & executives at my company never stood for that BS so I still get to use whitelist & blacklist in documentation, and don't worry about those non-issues get in the way of me actually doing work. Google might be too far gone, and working with those people would be so exhausting that it's actually stopped me from applyi…

Silly question: ignoring any kind of history, why fight for terms like "whitelist" and "blacklist" when terms like "allowlist" and "blocklist" are objectively clearer, especially for folks who's first language is not English?

You may very well may be right that terms "allowlist" and "blocklist" are objectively clearer. I'm in favor of the idea of changing language to make things clearer and more effective. But the contention I have is that these changes aren't motivated for the pursuit of clarity. They are motivated by a need for cleansing. "whitelist" and "blacklist" are innocuous terms. They have been around for ages. Used and understood with no controversy by our most prestigious institutions from around the world. Then suddenly, within a matter of two years, the term is high-jacked by upper echelon members of our society. The words are re-defined to take on a new meaning and a new interpretation. Virtually every one of us who used this term are now deemed bad. Oppressors. On the wrong side of history. Racists. Now deemed a fireable offense. No room for debate and discussion. It is for these reasons that I push back. The motivation behind this change is wrong and has the potential to be all consuming of our language and culture, deeming innocuous terms as oppressive when they are not.

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

#372

Post by vorpalhex »

cj wrote: post #342
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.

You could look at Grammarly ($10+ billion dollar valuation) as evidence that there is a market for a tool/plugin that improves a user’s prose.

Being told I use too many adjectives, my word choice is too heavy for my audience or that I used too many clauses is useful.

Being passive-aggressively told "blacklist" is a no-no word is not.

If you were really clever, you'd let the user set a "sensitivity" level for the writing from "normal human speak" to "corporate PR approved".

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

#373

Post by subjectsigma »

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.

Except that it broke all my fucking scripts that use git

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

#374

Post by imglorp »

bombcar wrote: post #340
shp0ngle wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which completely loses that for many people, their mother is NOT the woman who gave birth to them.

English has such a rich array of word choices for many parental situations, with many subtle variations conveying tone and meaning. MW has roughly 83 synonyms including both noun and verb forms, just for mother. I don't see how choosing any one of them for my particular situation will detract from anyone else's identity or journey: they are free to chose as well. Unless your tool bans 82 of them.

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

#375

Post by snek_case »

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.

I think this completely falls apart because most of the women who give birth identify as mothers, and would be very offended if you told them they couldn't.

I wish there was more pushback against this insanity. I've also seen people want to erase the word "blindspot" from the dictionary... Even though I'm sure no blind person was ever offended by it, because that word typically is used to refer to the limits of people who aren't blind.

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

#376

Post by nicbou »

yupper32 wrote: post #335
dekhn wrote: post #13

One of the reasons I left google is that their "content moderation team" (the folks who make you take down wrongthink memes) is so far out of touch, that somebody had to explain to them there are people in the world who are discriminated against, but aren't black. They simply didn't know that was the case! And if that's the people who are moderating content... I said motherboard all the time in meetings and chats, ne…

Sorry but did you just say one of the reasons you left google was the memegen moderation team? I can't imagine that being a legitimate worry that would impact my employment decisions. It seems there's a group of people who are too far in the other direction too. When I heard that it's preferred to say "allowlist" instead of "whitelist", do you know what my reaction was? "Sure, whatever." And I moved on with my life.…

You're right. I use the new terms and move on. It's really not that bad.

However it tends to become a password game. There's a new password every few months. If you know the new password, you get to feel above those who don't. It's as we invent new crimes to charge people with.

If no one calls it out (because sure, whatever), it keeps ratcheting up. Then banal conversations turn into minefields. What you say gets invalidated because you used the wrong password.

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

#377

Post by formerly_proven »

londons_explore wrote: post #158
brobinson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

plug, socket

... tells you where it is (cable-mounted or panel-mounted/fixed), not the gender.

                     plug     socket
    male             exists   exists
    female           exists   exists
    hermaphroditic   exists   exists
    changeable       exists   exists

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

#378

Post by ehsankia »

mortenjorck wrote: post #245
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…

This is indeed the root of my problem with the attempt to cast "blacklist" and "whitelist" as problematic. It confuses cause and effect. If we're going to try to re-engineer spoken English, I'd much rather address the root causes, which were the adoption of such literally black-and-white terms as racial identifiers in the first place. Calling light-skinned European-descended people "white" and dark-skinned members of…

I think the debate over whitelist/blacklist is often pointless. Yes there is not cause/effect link, but it honestly doesn't really matter. Allowlist and blocklist are much better words imo because they are self-descriptive, whereas whitelist/blacklist requires context and pre-existing knowledge to understand. And to you it may be obvious, but not everyone is from the same culture and has English as a first language. Why not just use the better terminology?

I am not advocating for banning the terms above, just to make an attempt going forward to slowly migrate to the other ones when possible.

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

#380

Post by dane-pgp »

tempnow987 wrote: post #318
xg15 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the x originally a gender thing? As in "folks" is gender neutral while "folx" actively acknowledges non-heteronormative genders.

Thank you, very interesting. I'd always taken gender neutral to include non-heteronormative genders. But I started seeing things like folx - confusing because I hadn't understood the word to be gendered or only gender normative.

> Thank you

Don't you mean "Thanx"?

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