Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
It depends on who you write for. As a non-native, non-American speaker, I'd be happy to know if I'm accidentally offending the people I'm writing to.
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
#412"Motherboard" was included in Apple's style guide in 2020 as "don't use" (https://help.apple.com/applestyleguide/#/apsg72b28652). Like it or hate it, this is the direction the industry, of which Google is a part, is moving. I'm sure a publication called Motherboard might have an opinion on this, but neither they nor Google are the final arbiters on the language. The I Have a Dream speech example is pretty anecdotal; King was an excellent writer, and I don't think Google is claiming this tool would make a person write like King. And the substitution suggestion in Kennedy's speech is just the way the language use has trended since his time... One can note that the Star Trek franchise changed the saying from "Where no man has gone before" to "Where no-one has gone before" in the time between then and now, as well. The Bible is probably the worst example to pull up for this topic; paging through the over 20 translations on biblegateway.com shows the passage in question is also sometimes translated as "great works", "mighty works", or just "miracles." Which should you use? It depends completely on what you're doing.
Of everything noted, the only possibly concerning one is really the lack of suggestions on a David Duke interview. If I had to guess, I'd chalk that up to lack of training data, and it may be something Google wants to consider addressing.
But at the end of the day, the overall thesis of the report is flawed. "But words do mean things," says the author. Yes, they do. Which is why it could be nice to have an auto-editor lifting up examples of words that might mean something other than the author intended (and then the author can choose to change their phrasing or stick with the original). Nothing about this feature claims to make users magically better at writing; it's an assistive tool to open the possibility, not unlike a spell-checker.
We've had Microsoft Word grammar checker for literal decades. This technology is neither particularly new nor, IMHO, particularly interesting (certainly not interesting enough to kick up this news cycle). It's no more 1984 than some random stranger online offering an opinion on your verbage is 1984.
Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken
#413Controversial suggestion but can the California folks just do their own bay area version of products? The rest of us around the world never asked for any of this weirdness Will it suggest "peace be upon him" in Islamic countries next? If not, why not? At least that's an actual religion unlike whatever this weirdness is. How is it inclusive to export this thinking to places that don't want it? Words are really just wo…
> Words are really just words. But they're not though. Words are products of, and inputs into, people's culture and modes of thought. Which is exactly why giving this much global power to one unelected politically extreme group of people is so dangerous.
Another is the freedom fighter vs terrorist word choice.
Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's in the banned words list, I can share a link internally if you want.
why does a company have a say which words are allowed to be used? i mean there are some bad words you shouldn’t use, but i just can’t grasp why is there something like “motherboard” on that list?
Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
it contains "lord" which is a male term I didn't think of that. I always thought of it as "lording over" something. As in she's the "lord of the land." That said, a landlord and a property owner are not the same thing. Many (most?) apartment buildings are owned by one company and managed by another.
> As in she's the "lord of the land." But she wouldn't be; she'd be the "lady of the land".
Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I wonder what your age is in comparison to your chosen ideal of 2005. As I am getting older it is easier to see the patterns in all this. Most people just want the entire world frozen from the time they were young. That includes everything from the cast of SNL to acceptable language. I have seen enough decades of people complaining about policing language to know that we survived multiple waves of this before 2005 an…
Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
Encountering this aspect of the culture war always makes me wonder why are tech companies so focused on these gender minorities and not, say, on the disabled groups. There are more blind, deaf, mute (etc, etc) people in the US than transgender people who will bear a child. It would be equally incoherent to attempt to replace all usages of “see”, “hear” with “perceive”.
Trans people are frequently in tech. Go to any college and you'll see the CompSci department is the one with the most amount of LGBT individuals. The same can't be said for people who are blind or deaf.
Several impressive videos on social media have shown that programming without using vision or even hands is perfectly possible, there are very few good reasons why such underrepresentation shouldn't be corrected for. In fact, I believe for many disabilities a job in fields like data science or programming would be much easier to adjust for disabilities than many other sectors where interactivity is key.
Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 inv…
Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken
#419> Cutting phrases like “whitelist/blacklist” and “master/slave” out of our vocabulary not only addresses years of habitual bias in tech terminology, but forces us as writers and researchers to be more creative with the way we describe things. > calling landlords “property owners” is almost worse than calling them “landchads,” and half as accurate. It’s catering to people like Howard Schultz who would prefer you not c…
Why not use proprietor?
Re: Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken
#420In 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…