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> Google’s technology will not suggest gender-based pronouns because the risk is too high that its “Smart Compose” technology might predict someone’s sex or gen

> Google’s technology will not suggest gender-based pronouns because the risk is too high that its “Smart Compose” technology might predict someone’s sex or gender identity incorrectly and offend users Nobody cares when touch keyboards predict the wrong pronouns, so why would the same service in an email client be any different?

atom-morgan 8y ago
I can find you some people.
bluetidepro 8y ago
I agree. It seems a bit hyper sensitive to me. Esp when it's a machine that's predicting it, and not a human.
- levesque 8y ago
  Bias is one of the new hot topics in ML. People act surprised that a face recognition software trained on a database of white people is unable to properly classify pictures of people from all around the world. The algorithm is only learning the data it was fed.
Bartweiss 8y ago
Touch keyboards are (mostly) reliant on the user's history, so they offer a ready made "it's your own damn habits" defense that's less accessible for Google. A larger issue is that touch keyboards predict using single words and pretty quickly spiral into Markov chain incoherence if you let them draft whole messages. Smart Compose tries to offer syntactic and even semantic understanding. If I type "The investor is here, do you want to meet", my phone keyboard is working off 'meet', and will probably suggest 'up'. Smart Compose is working off 'investor' also, and apparently arrived at 'him'. (It's not clear to me from the article if this was actually tracked to specific biases, or if the predictions just adopted the default masculine.) But most of all, I'm guessing Google's core motivation is explained by the offhand comment that Smart Reply uses the same logic. A gendered pronoun suggestion probably isn't going to spark a scandal, but a feature that encourages you to send Google-drafted text unedited might be subject to a lot more scrutiny.
lujim 8y ago
No one actually cares, but a small minority will throw a temper tantrum for political leverage. Google doesn't actually care either. I hate call it virtue signaling but that's totally what it is even though that term is completely worn out at this point.

atom-morgan 8y ago

I can find you some people.

bluetidepro 8y ago

I agree. It seems a bit hyper sensitive to me. Esp when it's a machine that's predicting it, and not a human.

levesque 8y ago
Bias is one of the new hot topics in ML. People act surprised that a face recognition software trained on a database of white people is unable to properly classify pictures of people from all around the world. The algorithm is only learning the data it was fed.

Bartweiss 8y ago

Touch keyboards are (mostly) reliant on the user's history, so they offer a ready made "it's your own damn habits" defense that's less accessible for Google. A larger issue is that touch keyboards predict using single words and pretty quickly spiral into Markov chain incoherence if you let them draft whole messages. Smart Compose tries to offer syntactic and even semantic understanding. If I type "The investor is here, do you want to meet", my phone keyboard is working off 'meet', and will probably suggest 'up'. Smart Compose is working off 'investor' also, and apparently arrived at 'him'. (It's not clear to me from the article if this was actually tracked to specific biases, or if the predictions just adopted the default masculine.) But most of all, I'm guessing Google's core motivation is explained by the offhand comment that Smart Reply uses the same logic. A gendered pronoun suggestion probably isn't going to spark a scandal, but a feature that encourages you to send Google-drafted text unedited might be subject to a lot more scrutiny.

lujim 8y ago

No one actually cares, but a small minority will throw a temper tantrum for political leverage. Google doesn't actually care either. I hate call it virtue signaling but that's totally what it is even though that term is completely worn out at this point.