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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

#511

Post by Pxtl »

dxhdr wrote: post #383
tedsanders wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting myself in the shoes of a kid learning about computers, I find some of these phrases to be more clear, not less clear. Two examples: Allowlist and denylist are much clearer to a kid learning about computers than whitelist or blacklist. If you've never heard of whitelist before, it's sounds like a list of things that are white. If you've never of allowlist, it's pretty obvious what it means - a list of things t…

> Mainboard implies there's one main board. Motherboard could be more ambiguous to someone who's never seen the inside of a computer. Are there two boards, mother and father? Am I crazy or does mainboard strongly imply there's more than one -- eg main, supporting / secondary, etc? Stories have a main character which is almost by definition not the only character in the narrative.

"Parentboard" is probably better than "mainboard", but given the choice between "motherboard" and "mainboard", which are the two currently-accepted terms for that particular component, I'm going to go with mainboard.

Edit: isn't the videocard technically a "non-main-board"? I mean nobody called it a "daughterboard" but it kind of technically is one isn't it? And so if "mainboard" implies the existence of "non-main-boards"... that accurately describes its relationship with the video card, which is a baord.

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

#513

Post by alex_suzuki »

rougka wrote: post #503
scythe wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I want to offer greenlist and redlist And to those who say this is not inclusive to the colorblind, I say traffic lights

Well yes, traffic lights are a problem, I’m red-green color blind myself. But the brain is smart enough to supply the right „color“ because it knows that red is on top and green is below. Wait a second, is that offensive towards the color green? ;-)

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

#514

Post by sjtindell »

madamelic wrote: post #151
silicon2401 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the hypocrisy of radical leftists in a nutshell. They claim to fight racial thinking while in fact just making it more prominent than it's been in decades.

It's also what will cause the far right to succeed. The left eats its own rather than being patient or tolerant ("I shouldn't have to teach you!") to people who mean well, while the right allows people to fly way off the handle and still be within their tent because their tent expands to include increasingly extreme ideas.

Both sides eat their own. It’s a result of social media cancel culture, which both sides engage in. No moderate opinions allowed anywhere. The right constantly rejects people who aren’t extreme enough. “Rino” is a huge term now.

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

#515

Post by Pxtl »

tryptophan wrote: post #195
madamelic wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its worse because suddenly 20 years worth of tutorials are slightly 'wrong' and will confuse new users even more for no reason. "Why does my git say main and not master? Did I break it?" "Why cant I push to master like the 100x tutorials show? I get errors!"

Refactor mercilessly.

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

#517

Post by dodobirdlord »

ushakov wrote: post #482
DannyBee wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The banned words list they are referring to is about what words should be used in external product documentation and marketing :) Not about what you are allowed to say inside google, or anything like that.

the point still stands though could you please explain to me, a non-native english speaker, why using "mainboard" is better than "motherboard"?

Some languages have gendered words as a fundamental grammatical aspect of the language (though since this language aspect evolved out of earlier grammatical distinctions that had nothing to do with “gender”, frequently the gendering of words is kinda random). English doesn’t have grammatical gender, and it has a relatively small set of words in its vocabulary that are specifically gendered. The argument goes that the use of some of this vocabulary is harmful, and that it’s easier to try to move away from using the whole class of gender-specific vocabulary words outside of actually gender-specific scenarios than it is to try to define and keep track of which gendered vocabulary words should be discouraged. Words like “motherboard” are collateral damage of this broader effort to discourage use of terms like “mothering”, which can be used in English to mean both “being mother to”, but also in a metaphorical generic sense as “being responsible for and looking after”, even of things that are not children, and is discouraged in favor of “parenting” or “caretaking”, which have the same implications but without the gendered aspect.

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

#518

Post by sva_ »

dane-pgp wrote: post #410
londons_explore wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm allergic to carbon.

Well, the Earth's climate sort of is.

To quote George Carlin: "The planet is fine, the people are fucked."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdSi9NW5u3E

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

#519

Post by [deleted] »

dvirsky wrote: post #306
itsyaboi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#520

Post by Pxtl »

throw10920 wrote: post #461
madamelic wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 backward…

> 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".

I actually know a social-justice oriented trans woman online who strongly advocates for the use of Tau instead of Pi because it is simpler and easier to learn. So sample of 1 there.

Tau vs Pi is a perfect microcosm of this debate with the social justice arguments removed. See also metric vs imperial.

The benefits are small but non-zero and localized to a handful of people, the new terminology is substantially simpler and cleaner, and the costs are primarily related to inertia and the comfort of people experienced with The Old Way.

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