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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

#781

Post by barry-cotter »

limelight wrote: post #674
slg wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, the net result is that words are driven out of the language even if everyone involved in the document wouldn't care. No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. Is anyone worried about that word being "driven out of the language"? I don't think corporate speech is as influential in overall language use as you are implying.

> No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. Swear words are specifically used to be provocative, so naturally they're not going to disappear. Words like "motherboard" or "whitelist" were historically neutral and primarily used in professional settings, so removal from corporate speech is correspondingly a much bigger factor. To be clear, I'm not particularly worried or concerned about this. I don't consid…

> The number of complainants can often be quite small. For centuries, theorists have worried about the potential of unrestrained democracy to lead to a tyranny of the majority, in which majority groups ride roughshod over the rights of minorities. What we often see today is instead a kind of tyranny of the minority: a system in which a particularly extreme and motivated fraction of the populace can wield outsized power in the face of a majority which is either too indifferent or too scared to oppose it.

https://areomagazine.com/2019/04/02/the-tyranny-of-the-minor...

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

#782

Post by meetups323 »

pvillano wrote: post #652
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:

We have one, but most people probably shouldn't use it.

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

#783

Post by temporallobe »

nullc wrote: post #564
temporallobe wrote: post #289

The older I get, the more I fail to understand how the vocal minority is able to completely control the narrative on everything. While we’re at it, let’s just gut the English language of anything remotely related to gender, race, or color. Then we can go after Latin-based languages that use gender at the core of their grammar.

Weird. The older I get the more understandable it becomes to me. None of this crap matters. At most it matters because it enables bullying, but bullies are always going to find something to bully over. "Good job, you won, you made me stop using a perfectly fine word that was uniformly well understood, and replace it with another perfectly fine word that is also uniformly well understood. Nothing changed, but now at l…

Eventually the bullies bully themselves and then no one is safe.

I especially find the term “birthing person” particularly cringey and offensive and I imagine women do as well. Humanity was perfectly fine with the word “woman” (in whatever language you choose) for as long as we invented language, but then some elitist academic comes along and thinks they can simply erase that because…reasons?

Inclusion does not imply exclusion!

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

#784

Post by iratewizard »

manesioz wrote: post #702

I know "it's literally 1984" [1] is a meme but c'mon... This is ridiculous even for Google. The systematic deconstruction and sanitation of language so that it conforms to a particular group's ideological leanings is unacceptable, especially in the hand's of a mega corporation. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

Who better to do it?

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

#785

Post by Banana699 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #640
nullc wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (1) a right wing attempt to satirize the left It's hard not to secretly suspect that some of these things arise that way-- satire that is so spot on that it gets adopted as the truth. > and out of usage to be replaced by something else I wouldn't care Fundamentally that's why language bullying works-- it doesn't matter what words are used so long as the communicating parties understand each other. Not only does it…

Policing Language (and frequently changing it) is one of the levers of control that was outlined heavily by Orwell in 1984, with the concept of Doublespeak. Now I know people are bored of parallels between reality and 1984, or Brave New World, or whatever other dystopia novels. They were written by authors not prophets after all. Still, it's impossible for me not to think we're on our way when I read something like "…

>Doublespeak

You mixed up newspeak, the constructed language the state was inventing, with doublethink, the practice of believing 2 contradictory statements that each support the state in opposing ways (having it both ways).

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

#786

Post by nitrogen »

aendruk wrote: post #293
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…

The change from “landlord” feels good. I’ve always felt a little awkward when using the word but couldn’t articulate why. Google wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s nice that someone is able to dedicate attention to this.

I’ve always felt a little awkward when using the word but couldn’t articulate why.

It's worth considering the possibility that the "why" is due to insidious bullying, a miasmatic reframing of language in the false name of unity.

If everyone feels a bit awkward about saying anything, then those who generated the awkwardness gain tremendous power.

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

#787

Post by SamPatt »

words_and_signs wrote: post #743
lupire wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is wrong. It's a good rule of thumb because passive voice can be a common indicator of weak writing, but it has plenty of good uses in strong writing. The best case to apply it is when the object of a sentence was previously a subject or other focus of prior sentences, and so is more familiar to the reader than the subject of the new sentence. For example: "The United States had maintained neutrality until 1941.…

"The United States was neutral until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, leading them to enter the war."

I'd say active is still better here.

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

#788

Post by donkeybeer »

rmbyrro wrote: post #745
evocatus wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These people remind me of crusaders a thousand years ago, fighting the "infidels" all over. In fact, the whole body of thought governing them reminds me too much of the Latin Church. I have no words to express how I detest the kind of thinking behind them.

How many people have these people killed and how many wars have they started in the name of inclusivity?

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

#789

Post by Jordrok »

teakettle42 wrote: post #713
limelight wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. Swear words are specifically used to be provocative, so naturally they're not going to disappear. Words like "motherboard" or "whitelist" were historically neutral and primarily used in professional settings, so removal from corporate speech is correspondingly a much bigger factor. To be clear, I'm not particularly worried or concerned about this. I don't consid…

> the kind thing to do is to go along with those who do care a lot. Enabling bullies in their social dominance games isn’t being kind .

You have a very warped definition of the word "bully".

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

#790

Post by SamPatt »

alanh wrote: post #757
Fomite wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely important in a lot of policy positions to be able to use things like "a decision was made".

Is it extremely important to omit who made the decision?

Yes. In this case "good" writing is bad writing because the author's goal is obfuscation.

It's bad writing for the reader. But lots of writing isn't actually for clear communication. Especially when the government is involved.

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