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

Post by Fomite » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 11:58 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #666

yeetsfromhellL2 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I've seen an English linter to help you maintain a passive voice for papers, remove waffle words and unnecessary fluff, etc. I'm not sure I can find the exact one I'm thinking of, but wasn't too bad overall, it spotted errors and made helpful suggestions. It was cool too, because it would read from stdin and integrated into vim pretty well with a few lines in my config.

Why would you want to maintain a passive voice? That's terrible writing unless you are defendant in litigation.

Post by rayiner » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 12:04 AM UTC

evocatus wrote: post #716

rayiner wrote: post #711

It’s also inaccurate to call this language “inclusive.” In reality, you’re excluding most Americans who aren’t among the handful of mostly affluent, white, college educated people who talk like this. My Bangladeshi immigrant mom would have no idea what to do if a warning popped up telling her that she should use a different word than “mother.”

Hear hear. Latinx, Filipinx - how dare the whites invent terminology to refer to disadvantaged minorities, using incorrect grammatical constructions or letters not even in the language of the people you refer to. This is white cultural imperialism, full stop. Right or left, I don't care where it comes from - I know it when I smell it.

Post by tomp » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 12:06 AM UTC

evocatus wrote: post #716

rayiner wrote: post #711

It’s also inaccurate to call this language “inclusive.” In reality, you’re excluding most Americans who aren’t among the handful of mostly affluent, white, college educated people who talk like this. My Bangladeshi immigrant mom would have no idea what to do if a warning popped up telling her that she should use a different word than “mother.”

Hear hear. Latinx, Filipinx - how dare the whites invent terminology to refer to disadvantaged minorities, using incorrect grammatical constructions or letters not even in the language of the people you refer to. This is white cultural imperialism, full stop. Right or left, I don't care where it comes from - I know it when I smell it.

Post by nickff » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 12:10 AM UTC

ra0x3 wrote: post #668

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 actually…doesn’t not make sense

Post by nsajko » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 12:11 AM UTC

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…