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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

#651

Post by foota »

cowl wrote: post #322
mikkergp wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this article hints at an important thing though which is that language is contextual. Even if we think that we should describe mothers as birthing persons or fathers as non-birthing parents in the general context, I should be allowed to refer to myself as a father. People of color can re-claim slurs, which a correction to could probably feel paternalistic. There are lots of contexts where certain language is…

> Even if we think that we should describe mothers as birthing persons Mother definitely does not mean birthing person. The easiest example is adoption. Would would you call the mother in that case? Adoptive Female Parent goes again against the 'rule' because it has female in there. Parent 1/Parent 2? no it has Hierarchy.

I think you're looking for the word parent?

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

#652

Post by pvillano »

riffraff wrote: post #76

The most hilarious thing about this is that Google has used "AI" to create the most un-inclusive tool of all, Google Translate. I present you the beautiful translation of hungarian gender-less sentences to english: ő csinos. ő okos. ő csúnya. ő jó. becomes she is pretty. he is clever. she is ugly. he is good. I can't wait for inclusive warnings to come to non-english languages.

if only English had a gender neutral pronoun that could be used by default when the gender of the subject isn't provided :thinking:

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

#653

Post by rayiner »

> Emily Lipstein typed “Motherboard” (as in, the name of this website) into a document and Google popped up to tell her she was being insensitive: “Inclusive warning. Some of these words may not be inclusive to all readers. Consider using different words.”

It’s amazing how a Fortune 500 company can release a product that chastises you for using the word “motherboard” because it has “mother” in it, while other people insist that this is a “fringe” type of thinking and not “mainstream” on the left.

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

#654

Post by Stupulous »

la6472 wrote: post #548
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…

I support it and I don’t work for google. I like this feature that encourages more empathy in this strife and hate filled world.

While I don't doubt that an intent of this is to promote empathy, I would need to see some evidence before I could be open to the possibility that that is its effect. Anecdotally, these things seem to incense anger and hatred- I've never heard anyone say that being language-policed made them a better person, but I have seen people behave in a way that suggests the opposite. Personally, I become less empathic when someone assumes authority over what I say or write.

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

#655

Post by woodruffw »

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.

I would be extremely surprised if this came from the left: most people I know relish the negative connotation of being able to describe someone as a landlord.

I would believe the GP's second hypothesis; it's hard to imagine who else would even think to substitute "property owner" for "landlord" (it's not even accurate!)

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

#656

Post by Stupulous »

thrwy_ywrht wrote: post #645
jandrese wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those who don't like that the concept of owning land exists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxRkHeQ7-B8 A caveat of bending over backwards to be as inclusive as possible is that sometimes you end up including people who are just plain nuts. You end up enshrining the personal problems of a handful of people into company policy.

> people who are just plain nuts Are you suggesting that it's "plain nuts" to be against private ownership of land?

As someone who somewhat supports public land ownership (of the Georgism variety), I think you'd have to be plain nuts to use that belief to justify discouraging others to use the word 'landlord'. Especially considering I hear the word more from people who oppose land ownership than from anyone else. I'm more inclined to believe that this is about gender.

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

#657

Post by quantified »

rayiner wrote: post #653

> Emily Lipstein typed “Motherboard” (as in, the name of this website) into a document and Google popped up to tell her she was being insensitive: “Inclusive warning. Some of these words may not be inclusive to all readers. Consider using different words.” It’s amazing how a Fortune 500 company can release a product that chastises you for using the word “motherboard” because it has “mother” in it, while other people…

FFS

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

#658

Post by johnnyanmac »

rayiner wrote: post #653

> Emily Lipstein typed “Motherboard” (as in, the name of this website) into a document and Google popped up to tell her she was being insensitive: “Inclusive warning. Some of these words may not be inclusive to all readers. Consider using different words.” It’s amazing how a Fortune 500 company can release a product that chastises you for using the word “motherboard” because it has “mother” in it, while other people…

"Parentboard".

But yes, anytime you hear "AI-powered" and "Natural language parsing", these kinds of cases are inevitable. I know google prides itself on technology, but there are some things like language that are moving so fast, with so many states that an initiative like this takes actual humans to debug. But given Youtube, it seems like Google is still stuck in the thought that they can automate everything.

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

#659

Post by 31098347 »

There's a few different things to unpack with this feature.

(1) It would be useful in the context of a general style guide, like a white-label Grammarly. Corporations could set their own prompts for words, phrases, and structures. This would make documentation more consistent.

(2) This is dystopian as fuck. Google has the ability to see, aggregate, and now influence what you write in Google docs and Gmail. Who is making the decision on what to "correct"? Is this algorithm explainable?

Bias: I already disagree with Grammarly as an entire category of product.

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