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

vice.com

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

#61

Post by chrisfosterelli »

> 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 call him a billionaire, but a “person of means.”

"I like the tool because it removes others' words that I don't like but I don't like the tool because it removes my words that others don't like"

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

#62

Post by ElFitz »

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.

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

#63

Post by tremon »

andrewmutz wrote: post #44
Kylekramer wrote: post #18

This is an article nearly entirely built around a viral Tweet regarding "landlord" cause Vice writers live in a strange world where that is essentially a slur they want to use, and then found two edge cases to make it an "article".

Why would "landlord" be considered a slur?

It's not a slur, it's just distinguishing people between those that own property and those that don't. As such, it's offensive to large swathes of disadvantaged people.

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by ushakov »

mgraczyk wrote: post #34
timmg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

#67

Post by gdulli »

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.

Well, switching to a new word isn't going to make anyone happy if what they're really upset by is that the underlying concept exists.

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

#68

Post by routeerror40 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #19
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…

This attempt at "de-offensive-izing" all language has the effect of turning clear, evocative phrases to mush. George Carlin's skit couldn't be more timely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMm2vF4uFs

Carlin was a genius and ahead of his time.

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

#69

Post by jmalicki »

twobitshifter wrote: post #48
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…

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.

lessor? Out of curiosity for legalese, I found a California assembly member is actually trying to change landlord -> lessor in its laws https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

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

#70

Post by nebulous_two »

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…

Put yourself in the shoes of your average content moderator. Aren't they there for the paycheck like most people at their jobs? Why does everyone assume these people are first and foremost bastions of acceptable behaviour? They are instructed by executives as to how to do their jobs. Now executives are learning nuance and say "oh there's more to this than you thought, so here's the updated guidelines to follow now", to shift blame for this broken system to the moderators when all along they were following orders from above.
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