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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

#461

Post by throw10920 »

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.

> `main` is better. It's shorter, it's more descriptive, and costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive.

All of these are true! I agree, "main" is a better name.

However, as to the larger point, the individuals and groups advocating for these changes also don't advocate for similar changes (that is, things that have good benefits but come with a very high cost to implement due to breaking backwards compatibility) around technologies/terms that they don't consider to be "problematic".

That strongly suggests that the driver isn't to improve technology, it's to shape language, with occasional incidental technological benefits - and the ignored technological regressions (it's harder to say "allowlist" than "whitelist", for instance, or to write applications that have a field to place in the user's preferred pronouns than just not address the user using pronouns at all).

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

#462

Post by JaimeThompson »

ElFitz wrote: post #62

And now the rest of the world will be very happy learn that they will once more have to silently deal with the aftermath of America’s latest political trend. After banning world-famous paintings from Facebook because they dared show a breast, a few well-off engineers and product managers will now pick which English words should remain, and which should be let go. How nice of them. Don’t know what we’d do without them…

>banning world-famous paintings from Facebook because they dared show a breast

Issues with breasts aren't exactly a new thing in the US, just ask Janet Jackson.

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

#463

Post by badwolf »

Icathian wrote: post #292
meetups323 wrote: post #11

I wonder if this is an example of not knowing your audience (or rather assuming one's self represents a wider audience than it does). The people vouching for this at Google are likely product marketing managers, public relations folks, social media managers, etc. All they do is write corporate garbage all day, and much like we have "nit"s in PR's for formatting, variable names, etc; they likely have similar reviews t…

This explanation rings a lot more true to me than the rest of this thread. Everyone here seems to be looking into shadows for the woke gestapo, when I'd be willing to bet that this explanation is a lot closer to how this tool actually came to exist. I appreciate you adding to the conversation.

They probably just don't want their employees sending their valuable company data to Grammarly.

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

#464

Post by throw10920 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #256
vimy wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I’m pessimistic about the West winning the second cold war. While Chinese engineers are working hard on world dominating AI models and other hard tech, Western engineers are wasting man hours on crap like this.

The west will win the second cold war because the communist party will not be able to release its iron grip on its populace. The Chinese people only accept that iron grip now because it's carrying them up from a low place, but once that stops the constriction will become suffocating, leading to civil unrest and diaspora of the upper tier of Chinese society.

There's a saying - "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".

Even if there was some natural physical law that guaranteed that oppressive nations would eventually be overthrown/atrophy, there's definitely nothing that puts a bound on how long that will take.

And, as we've seen with Ukraine, war can break out more quickly than any of us think.

(also, if the social justice warriors in the West have their way, the US government itself would be overthrown and replaced with its own, authoritarian, but ineffective regime, long before a conflict with China would occur)

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

#465

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#466

Post by mattzito »

nicbou wrote: post #376
yupper32 wrote: post #335

Earlier 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…

Yeah, I’m the same way - also a googler, I used the term “grandfathered” in a meeting with a bunch of people and someone on Meet chat corrected me to “legacy” or something, and I said, “oh, okay, no problem” and corrected myself and moved on.

So - I used a word that someone didn’t like, they corrected me, I adjusted without deep apology and moved on, and everything was fine. Who cares? Why is this such a huge issue, language evolves all the time.

My suspicion is - of people who run into problems with language at tech companies, half of the problem is due to their reaction to being corrected.

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

#467

Post by throw10920 »

xg15 wrote: post #83
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…

Out of couriosity: Why then didn't flag it the actual n-word of all things? > A transcribed interview of neo-Nazi and former Klan leader David Duke—in which he uses the N-word and talks about hunting Black people—gets no notes. Edit: Also interesting that this comment is dropping like a stone in HN's comment ranking, even though currently the comment score is at 1. If I accidentally triggered some anti-flame or anti-…

> Edit: Also interesting that this comment is dropping like a stone in HN's comment ranking, even though currently the comment score is at 1. If I accidentally triggered some anti-flame or anti-profanity filter, I'm sorry.

Comment order is a function of both score and age. As far as anybody (except those who actually have access to the source), there's no other "hidden" mechanic.

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

#468

Post by svachalek »

bloak wrote: post #392
astura wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blacklist" and "whitelist" suck anyway because they require the cultural knowledge that "black is bad and white is good" to understand their meaning. "Allowlist" and "denylist" don't require any cultural background to understand - their names are purely descriptive. They are just better terms.

What about "redlist" and "greenlist"? The association between "red" and "stop", and between "green" and "go", seem more arbitrary than the associations with "black" and "white" but almost everyone in the world is familiar with traffic lights. (And the inhabitants of the North Sentinel Island probably don't need to configure mail servers or whatever.)

Red and green mean stop/go but only in a narrow context. I would have no idea what redlist and greenlist means. Red and green also bring to mind Christmas and Martians. Red means communism, green means environmentalism. Green means money, red means a negative entry in your account. There's a lot of culture-specific meanings too. Red in China is associated with good fortune and happiness.

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

#469

Post by mateo1 »

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"?"

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

#470

Post by tempnow987 »

NtGuy25 wrote: post #354
tempnow987 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely do not do this. There is massive brigading that happens and the folks pushing the "anti-isms" are very very focused on this stuff. You will get on a list as some type of abuser / racist. Everyone knows to keep heads down on this stuff at a place like google or just find somewhere else to work. It really doesn't matter if you are liberal in all other ways even.

There's plenty of other companies that have the other side of the coin in values though that would admire people who stand up. It's very nice to be a good culture fit at a company. I have a Blue Lives Matter flag in the corner of my camera during interviews and it's gotten me some really good offers and I havn't been declined once. On the flip side, I know many that have been discriminated based on their looks or voc…

I actually would prefer that most political stuff stay out of the workplace. So minimize the crosses, the blue lives matter flags, the other stuff.

In many of the more frugal businesses I've seen, folks just don't have the time to strike / protest etc for some of the stuff the FANG folks are into.

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