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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

#931

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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!"

This is tech. 20 years of tutorials are always becoming slightly wrong. Don't tell me you're still using bare pointers, `new` and `delete` in your C++ classes instead of using smart_ptr fields, or explicitly declaring local variable types instead of using `auto`...

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

#932

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Why is an analogy to slavery a bad thing? Such that even references to the concept need to banned The Partition of India was a horrific tragedy and killed 2 million people. Does this mean we should do away with partition_sort ?

Partition_sort isn't an analogy to the Partition of India (which isn't the traditionally understood meaning of the word 'partition'). In terms of analogies, we're much closer to if we'd decided to call a "delete all" function the "genocide" function. If computer programmers had widely used that terminology for the last three decades it might sound a bit less weird to us and the cohort of people shouting "that's such…

>Partition_sort isn't an analogy to the Partition of India

And "slave" isn't an analogy to transatlantic slavery.

And anyways, who decides which words are associated with bannable tragedies?

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

#933

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To the extent that this is true, it is not because they are women, but because they have uncommon names, at least uncommon among American public figures. If I say "Kamala is unpopular among inner-city communities", you're likely to know who I'm talking about. If I say the same about "Joe" you're much more likely to be confused. Additionally, people often say "Trump", "Obama", "Biden". Saying "Clinton" is somewhat amb…

Bernie, Mitt, Jeb, W., Bill.

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

#934

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.

Why would you use the word filipinx when there’s already the gender neutral word Filipino? Also doesn’t filipinx exclude Filipinos outside of the American diaspora? Then what do you call Filipinos outside of that geographical area?

See, you’re digging your own semantic hole with all this political correctness.

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

#935

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Either way, people here aren't discriminated based on their race. Never were. This particular problem seems to be uniquely American because of their history. We do have a word for racism by the way. It's, unsurprisingly, "расизм".

(Not a historian, so fully expect half of this to be wrong in one way or another.) > Either way, people here aren't discriminated based on their race. Never were. That is untrue. You could argue the “pale of settlement” (instituted shortly after the annexation of parts of Poland made Jews more than a rounding error) was discrimination based on religion, not ancestry (and indeed it seems to have had some resemblance t…

great comment

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

#936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partition_sort isn't an analogy to the Partition of India (which isn't the traditionally understood meaning of the word 'partition'). In terms of analogies, we're much closer to if we'd decided to call a "delete all" function the "genocide" function. If computer programmers had widely used that terminology for the last three decades it might sound a bit less weird to us and the cohort of people shouting "that's such…

>Partition_sort isn't an analogy to the Partition of India And "slave" isn't an analogy to transatlantic slavery. And anyways, who decides which words are associated with bannable tragedies?

Master/slave replication is unambiguously an analogy to the practice of slavery in general (not one accurate enough to be useful, I agree). 'Partition' is a generic term for the subdivision of something, with the subdivision of India not even being a particularly prominent example.

Who decides if particular words are potentially inappropriate? People decide, including people working for corporations that make linting tools or industry bodies like the MPAA. Ironically the latter is an actual monopoly that literally does attempt to prevent people from watching films based on its word lists rather than simply suggesting alternative words, but the longstanding practice of people being fussy about certain words is apparently only terrifying or Orwellian when the potentially offended party is minorities.

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

#937

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

They wage numerous wars, but the playing field is not full of swords and shields, but reputation destruction, intimidation, doxing, canceling, etc. The digital and public life is so important for many people today that, if you eliminate them there, it's like killing a good chunk of their lives. These people wage crusades against individual reputations and public/digital lives. Just because they think differently.

So like killing except for all the "not killing."

So not like killing at all. It is, however, a bit like building an orthodoxy. Which the group formerly in position to build orthodoxy is surprised to learn is an uncomfortable process.

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

#938
post #760

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There is a truth to what both of you are saying. Because from what I know Kamala is disliked among both Indian citizens and Inner-city black communities.

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Hillary campaigned as Hillary (her slogan was "Hillary for America") as did Jeb, W., Pete, Bernie and others. Gilibrand and Warren campaigned with their last names.

It has to do with how candidates choose to brand themselves.

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

#939
post #830

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It’s not a race thing, it’s a disability thing — “greyed out” is only something that makes sense to someone who can see, it’s confusing the actual concept with the visual indicator of the concept. It’s the same with “the box is checked” to mean “selected” or “redlining a contract” to mean “negotiating.” The point of inclusive language isn’t some weird political points contest. It’s writing in a manner that’s clear to…

>> The point of inclusive language isn’t some weird political points contest. It’s writing in a manner that’s clear to people of lots of different backgrounds and doesn’t rely on just having to know English idioms or have common shared experiences. I don't think efficiency and universal comprehension is the point at all . Deaf people understand the phrase "loud and clear" just as well as hearing people. Blind people…

You are assuming so much about what I said. Writing inclusively is not for everyone all of the time, it’s when you’re writing to the broadest possible audience and clarity, ease of understanding, and accessibility are paramount.

> Is your idea of perfect communication something that omits every daily experience…

No, what? It’s about avoiding terms where the context for understanding them are experiences not everyone has — “temba his arms wide” only makes sense to the Darmok.

> How is it "violence" to someone in a wheelchair to talk about walking to the store.

It’s not what are you even taking about? You should not presume that your reader can walk by saying things like “when you are out walking to the store” but there’s literally nothing wrong with mentioning walking.

> Policing every bit of language to cater to every potential group robs the language of its color

So this isn’t true, nobody is trying to force this on all language. But you have to take a step back and reflect on this. Given a hypothetical world where the choice was language color and including groups different from your own experience you really picked the former?

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

#940
post #27

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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.

I believed you enough to defend your claim on Twitter. And then Stella proved you wrong: https://twitter.com/blancheminerva/status/151783630034220237...

Your claim is somehow going a little viral. You have a responsibility to try to correct it.

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