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Is it just me or does it seem like the only people getting upset in these situations are the people offended by others trying not to offend others? It just does

Is it just me or does it seem like the only people getting upset in these situations are the people offended by others trying not to offend others? It just doesn't seem like a big deal either way. It's weird that people automatically view actions like this as some sort of moral command, and thus feel so strongly about it. At the end of the day, it's just a design choice to reduce inaccuracies. It's not something I would've thought to do myself, but I can see the reasoning for it. Bias in AI is a real issue, and it's wise to consider it earlier than later. Sometimes it's something more culturally visible, like in this situation, but oftentimes it can be much more subtle and insidious. This step isn't going to fix much but it's part of a bigger effort to make considering bias one of the priorities. Ignoring bias in our AI will make our AI more human in all the bad ways. On the other hand, Smart Compose already seems like a bad idea to me. It's good for their AI but bad for humans. This pronoun action feels like a micro optimization for this technology's social impact, while the entire feature itself is a small net harm for society, in my opinion. It's a subtle dampening of our personal voice and nuances.

DogPawHat 8y ago
Yeah, people are getting worked up about a good faith trade off in software features made by a company trying to create products useable by, preferably, every single person on the planet. And since gender is something were are - right now, whether you like it or not - revising our understanding of, it makes sense to wait until you have a better solution to the problem. I mean, autocorrect can only take you so far anyway, your gonna have to change it a bit anyway and I assume most people with two brain cells knows the gender and preferred pronouns of the people mentioned in the convo and knows how to use them properly even if they don't have a clue about the pronoun debate. This is an edge case, but still something they saw value in avoiding a mistake in.

DogPawHat 8y ago

Yeah, people are getting worked up about a good faith trade off in software features made by a company trying to create products useable by, preferably, every single person on the planet. And since gender is something were are - right now, whether you like it or not - revising our understanding of, it makes sense to wait until you have a better solution to the problem. I mean, autocorrect can only take you so far anyway, your gonna have to change it a bit anyway and I assume most people with two brain cells knows the gender and preferred pronouns of the people mentioned in the convo and knows how to use them properly even if they don't have a clue about the pronoun debate. This is an edge case, but still something they saw value in avoiding a mistake in.