5 ms·

Software shouldn't guess gender

11 points by lladnar 10y ago

aksdj 10y ago
Why do people love to get offended?
- zepto 10y ago
  It wouldn't be offensive if there weren't real-world implications of how different genders are treated.
  - aries1980 10y ago
    The software under argument is not an end-user tool that is applied the actual state of the language. It has nothing to do with gender politics.
    - zepto 10y ago
      Not so. These tools are currently in use in web apps which guess user genders. I have actually witnessed embarrassment caused when invitations to sign up or collaborate get sent out with an incorrectly guessed gender.
      - aries1980 10y ago
        This feature is planned to be compulsory, therefore the web apps responsibility to disable it if their audience is sensitive to such errors. The bug in this case is in English, so the English language has to be fixed to reflect better to the times we live in. Tools like nlp_compromise are reflecting to the current state of English, not the other was round. In theory, language is a tool that you can replace if you are not happy with it. People who feel offended by the gender-aware languages have to option to use a gender-neutral language, such as Hungarian. ;) (Side-note: I more than happy to support a curated version of English, but only if it becomes a phonetic language. That would make billions of people's life much-much simpler.)
        zepto 10y ago
        Sounds like you are advocating that people adapt to what is convenient for programmers.
        aries1980 10y ago
        What do you mean?
        zepto 10y ago
        Suggesting that people should adopt another language if they don't like software that incorrectly guesses their gender.
        aries1980 10y ago
        The OP was upset about the gender-aware English as well.
wanderr 10y ago
The commenter asserting that knowing a user's gender is not useful for marketing is wildly wrong. I agree that showing pink to a user you think is female or only showing trucks to males is laughably stupid, but we have had campaigns that were not designed to target a specific gender that had a significantly higher conversion rate from one gender. It would have been a huge waste of money to not change the targeting criteria for the ads. Even an imperfect algorithm could save lots of money there if it's more than 50% accurate. That said, trying to guess gender based solely on name without any other context does seem woefully unlikely to do well.
- gravypod 10y ago
  There aren't implications only in marketing but also in HCI. If you use google search, you will know they do this sort of analysis to get you better search results.
- thescribe 10y ago
  People like this just love to complain, the best thing society could do is learn to ignore them.
KhalilK 10y ago
"If you don't like the implementation, write your own" People forget this very important concept in open source all the time.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  I wrote twenty pages of complains- now got to find a compiler for that.

11 points by lladnar 10y ago

aksdj 10y ago

Why do people love to get offended?

zepto 10y ago
It wouldn't be offensive if there weren't real-world implications of how different genders are treated.
- aries1980 10y ago
  The software under argument is not an end-user tool that is applied the actual state of the language. It has nothing to do with gender politics.
  - zepto 10y ago
    Not so. These tools are currently in use in web apps which guess user genders. I have actually witnessed embarrassment caused when invitations to sign up or collaborate get sent out with an incorrectly guessed gender.
    - aries1980 10y ago
      This feature is planned to be compulsory, therefore the web apps responsibility to disable it if their audience is sensitive to such errors. The bug in this case is in English, so the English language has to be fixed to reflect better to the times we live in. Tools like nlp_compromise are reflecting to the current state of English, not the other was round. In theory, language is a tool that you can replace if you are not happy with it. People who feel offended by the gender-aware languages have to option to use a gender-neutral language, such as Hungarian. ;) (Side-note: I more than happy to support a curated version of English, but only if it becomes a phonetic language. That would make billions of people's life much-much simpler.)
      - zepto 10y ago
        Sounds like you are advocating that people adapt to what is convenient for programmers.
        aries1980 10y ago
        What do you mean?
        zepto 10y ago
        Suggesting that people should adopt another language if they don't like software that incorrectly guesses their gender.
        aries1980 10y ago
        The OP was upset about the gender-aware English as well.

wanderr 10y ago

The commenter asserting that knowing a user's gender is not useful for marketing is wildly wrong. I agree that showing pink to a user you think is female or only showing trucks to males is laughably stupid, but we have had campaigns that were not designed to target a specific gender that had a significantly higher conversion rate from one gender. It would have been a huge waste of money to not change the targeting criteria for the ads. Even an imperfect algorithm could save lots of money there if it's more than 50% accurate. That said, trying to guess gender based solely on name without any other context does seem woefully unlikely to do well.

gravypod 10y ago
There aren't implications only in marketing but also in HCI. If you use google search, you will know they do this sort of analysis to get you better search results.
thescribe 10y ago
People like this just love to complain, the best thing society could do is learn to ignore them.

KhalilK 10y ago

"If you don't like the implementation, write your own" People forget this very important concept in open source all the time.

Pica_soO 10y ago
I wrote twenty pages of complains- now got to find a compiler for that.