3 ms·

What a clickbait article. Reading the title alone gives the impression that this is a change to appease the LGBT community or after receiving some similar press

What a clickbait article. Reading the title alone gives the impression that this is a change to appease the LGBT community or after receiving some similar pressure. All that happened is that the strings are hardcoded so they removed pronouns because they don't want to go though your entire email history to find out the person's gender. That's something that everyone do at some point when programming systems. You remove plurals and pronouns so that you do not have to manage them. Using gender neutral pronoun when writing about people whose gender you do not know is simply being polite. I wouldn't want Google to show me autocomplete suggestions for "do you want to meet him" when I'm writing an email to my mom or my girlfriend.

gnicholas 8y ago
> All that happened is that the strings are hardcoded so they removed pronouns because they don't want to go though your entire email history to find out the person's gender. This gives the impression that they'll never use a gendered pronoun. I assumed from reading the article that they're leaving off gender in cases where it isn't known. But in some cases it would be very known ("do you want to meet him?" / "yes, I'd love to meet him."). Are they really not going to include it even where it has been specifically referenced in the prior email?
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  My understanding is that they will show pronouns when it's clear. The system might repeat the last one you used or something like that. So if your entire email is about a woman the feature might suggest "her". The article seems to say that they are mainly removing the pronoun after titles. E.g. a secretary always being "her" but a CEO always being "him". According to the Reuters article: "Gmail product manager Paul Lambert said a company research scientist discovered the problem in January when he typed “I am meeting an investor next week,” and Smart Compose suggested a possible follow-up question: “Do you want to meet him?” instead of “her.”" The same article claims: "The gendered pronoun ban affects fewer than 1 percent of cases where Smart Compose would propose something, Lambert said." So that's really a clickbait article based on a non-issue. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-ai-gender/fearful-of-bias-google-blocks-gender-based-pronouns-from-new-ai-tool-idUSKCN1NW0EF https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-ai-gender...
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  it saves them a condition in frontend code. Now take all languages that google supports into considerations and the fact that some do gender pronouns differently than others (for example some change a suffix of the gendered word, some just add the pronoun in front). Its just easier to use neutral pronouns and neutral gendered words
thanosnose 8y ago
> Reading the title alone gives the impression that this is a change to appease the LGBT community or after receiving some similar pressure. Because that's the real impetus behind the gender hypersensitivy in society lately. > Using gender neutral pronoun when writing about people whose gender you do not know is simply being polite. Sure. It's alsom polite to use genders when you do know it. But the point is that if 90% of one profession is male and 90% of another profession is female, then it makes complete sense for it to autocomplete to "him" and "her". For the few exceptions, you could edit "him" to "her" and vice versa. > I wouldn't want Google to show me autocomplete suggestions for "do you want to meet him" when I'm writing an email to my mom or my girlfriend. If 90% of your emails were to your father or brother and 10% were to your mohter/girlfriend, wouldn't you want it to autocomplete to "him"? And the 10% of the time, just edit "him" to "her" when you are emailing your mother or gf? Besides, is your mother or gf going to go crazy if you accidently used the wrong pronoun? Wouldn't they know it was a mistake?

gnicholas 8y ago

> All that happened is that the strings are hardcoded so they removed pronouns because they don't want to go though your entire email history to find out the person's gender. This gives the impression that they'll never use a gendered pronoun. I assumed from reading the article that they're leaving off gender in cases where it isn't known. But in some cases it would be very known ("do you want to meet him?" / "yes, I'd love to meet him."). Are they really not going to include it even where it has been specifically referenced in the prior email?

Raphmedia 8y ago
My understanding is that they will show pronouns when it's clear. The system might repeat the last one you used or something like that. So if your entire email is about a woman the feature might suggest "her". The article seems to say that they are mainly removing the pronoun after titles. E.g. a secretary always being "her" but a CEO always being "him". According to the Reuters article: "Gmail product manager Paul Lambert said a company research scientist discovered the problem in January when he typed “I am meeting an investor next week,” and Smart Compose suggested a possible follow-up question: “Do you want to meet him?” instead of “her.”" The same article claims: "The gendered pronoun ban affects fewer than 1 percent of cases where Smart Compose would propose something, Lambert said." So that's really a clickbait article based on a non-issue. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-ai-gender/fearful-of-bias-google-blocks-gender-based-pronouns-from-new-ai-tool-idUSKCN1NW0EF https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-ai-gender...
thecatspaw 8y ago
it saves them a condition in frontend code. Now take all languages that google supports into considerations and the fact that some do gender pronouns differently than others (for example some change a suffix of the gendered word, some just add the pronoun in front). Its just easier to use neutral pronouns and neutral gendered words

thanosnose 8y ago

> Reading the title alone gives the impression that this is a change to appease the LGBT community or after receiving some similar pressure. Because that's the real impetus behind the gender hypersensitivy in society lately. > Using gender neutral pronoun when writing about people whose gender you do not know is simply being polite. Sure. It's alsom polite to use genders when you do know it. But the point is that if 90% of one profession is male and 90% of another profession is female, then it makes complete sense for it to autocomplete to "him" and "her". For the few exceptions, you could edit "him" to "her" and vice versa. > I wouldn't want Google to show me autocomplete suggestions for "do you want to meet him" when I'm writing an email to my mom or my girlfriend. If 90% of your emails were to your father or brother and 10% were to your mohter/girlfriend, wouldn't you want it to autocomplete to "him"? And the 10% of the time, just edit "him" to "her" when you are emailing your mother or gf? Besides, is your mother or gf going to go crazy if you accidently used the wrong pronoun? Wouldn't they know it was a mistake?