4 ms·

In what universe is "Ten" a more common pronunciation of "X" than "X"? You might have an argument for "II" or "III", but I'll be shocked if any street in USA is

In what universe is "Ten" a more common pronunciation of "X" than "X"? You might have an argument for "II" or "III", but I'll be shocked if any street in USA is named after the tenth generation of really unimaginative namers.

handmodel 5y ago
Do you think Google is having someone go through the tens of thousands of street names? Or do you think they had a team (on a completely different project or perhaps company) write a text to speech function that wasn't well suited for directions. Streets have lots of numbers after all. People frequently have numbers in their name.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  I could see that for Google Maps v1.0. I think we're past that point now. There's no reason they should still be using libraries suited to parsing the names of forgotten European monarchs.
  - SllX 5y ago
    They’re neither forgotten, unused, nor is it a nomenclature used exclusively by Royals; nor are all the Royals that use this fashion dead or out of power.
scrollaway 5y ago
"(name) (Roman numeral)" is a much more commong occurence than "(name) (Single letter spelled out)". So to answer your question, this one. This universe. And no, nobody "programmed this". I don't know how anyone of decent technical competence can think that. The workaround has likely been hardcoded in some way, if anything. How can you possibly think that someone at google decided it would be funny to program, on purpose, a wrong pronunciation of Malcolm X, and even more so SOMEHOW NOT GET CAUGHT. By the way, there are an incredibly large amount of streets in the US alone, so no it would not be surprising. Here in Europe we have kings going up into the twenties of their name, and those ML models have to pronounce those too. I just... I just fucking can't, with comments like yours, anymore.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Is it sometimes a challenge to navigate in areas where streets like e.g. "Louis XXII" and "Louis XXIII" are near each other?
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    I wouldn't know, no such king exists. Also, i don't have a car. I would put money on the US having several streets named after European monarchs though. Maybe ask your GPS these questions instead.
- wtmt 5y ago
  > "(name) (Roman numeral)" is a much more commong occurence than "(name) (Single letter spelled out)" > So to answer your question, this one. This universe. But this is true in this universe only in some countries and places. There are many countries and places where an initial would follow the name and it is the legal name. This is precisely the problem with the data/algorithm as well as your argument. They’re not well formed for different contexts and need to have more context sensitivity.
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    Cultural sensitivity, you mean. If it mispronounced a random non-icon's name everyone would chuckle and forget about it. Pattern matchers don't understand culture, so this is gonna be a hard-coded workaround or intentional distortion of dataset to try and achieve the hard-coded workaround.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    The comment i was replying to straight up claimed this was done with intent. I agree with you, the algorithm needs to have more context sensitivity as you say. But nobody at google is getting their rocks off making the AI mispronounce things on purpose. Especially since, as anyone who used Google Maps in multilingual areas will attest, the algorithm is awful at dealing with context in general. It mispronounces tons of things. In Belgium it will switch between dutch and french names for streets randomly. Google Maps canonicalizes my address in Dutch, so whenever i input it on a website i have to deal with it "helpfully" "correcting" it to dutch. Which makes things difficult when I have to deal with French speakers... Google Maps has a lot of problems that are causing real harm to non-us cultures, which would likely get fixed with diversity. But i would never claim these things are done on purpose.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
There’s a Louis XIV Street in New Orleans (and I imagine elsewhere).
- gibolt 5y ago
  You mean Louis 'Ziv', according to Google
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    Putting Louis XIV in Google translate, I get the correct "Louis the Fourteenth" and "Louis Quatorze" pronounciations in English and French, respectively. However, it has to be uppercased, otherwise it spells the letters.
throwaway675309 5y ago
Oh for Pete's sake, absolute bloody conspiracy level nonsense, NOBODY sat there twirling their villainous mustache and programmed an exception to hardcode pronouncing X as 10, it's simply a matter of the training and sample data having access to some type of corpus that contained a great deal of Roman numerals. (Leave the software engineering to the software engineers)
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> to some type of corpus that contained a great deal of Roman numerals. I wager that there is more text online about Louis XIV than of Malcom X. Certainly there are many more books on that epic corner of French history than one modern US leader. Then there are all the British kings. Point an AI at the internet and it likely would decide that roman numerals are most often pronounced as number than letters. Malcom X would be rare an exception that might need to be hard coded.
wpietri 5y ago
For sure. If we're going with the common pronunciation of Roman numerals in English names, it's "Tenth". E.g., We don't say "Henry Ford III" as "Henry Ford Three" but "Henry Ford the Third".

handmodel 5y ago

Do you think Google is having someone go through the tens of thousands of street names? Or do you think they had a team (on a completely different project or perhaps company) write a text to speech function that wasn't well suited for directions. Streets have lots of numbers after all. People frequently have numbers in their name.

jessaustin 5y ago
I could see that for Google Maps v1.0. I think we're past that point now. There's no reason they should still be using libraries suited to parsing the names of forgotten European monarchs.
- SllX 5y ago
  They’re neither forgotten, unused, nor is it a nomenclature used exclusively by Royals; nor are all the Royals that use this fashion dead or out of power.

scrollaway 5y ago

"(name) (Roman numeral)" is a much more commong occurence than "(name) (Single letter spelled out)". So to answer your question, this one. This universe. And no, nobody "programmed this". I don't know how anyone of decent technical competence can think that. The workaround has likely been hardcoded in some way, if anything. How can you possibly think that someone at google decided it would be funny to program, on purpose, a wrong pronunciation of Malcolm X, and even more so SOMEHOW NOT GET CAUGHT. By the way, there are an incredibly large amount of streets in the US alone, so no it would not be surprising. Here in Europe we have kings going up into the twenties of their name, and those ML models have to pronounce those too. I just... I just fucking can't, with comments like yours, anymore.

jessaustin 5y ago
Is it sometimes a challenge to navigate in areas where streets like e.g. "Louis XXII" and "Louis XXIII" are near each other?
- scrollaway 5y ago
  I wouldn't know, no such king exists. Also, i don't have a car. I would put money on the US having several streets named after European monarchs though. Maybe ask your GPS these questions instead.
wtmt 5y ago
> "(name) (Roman numeral)" is a much more commong occurence than "(name) (Single letter spelled out)" > So to answer your question, this one. This universe. But this is true in this universe only in some countries and places. There are many countries and places where an initial would follow the name and it is the legal name. This is precisely the problem with the data/algorithm as well as your argument. They’re not well formed for different contexts and need to have more context sensitivity.
- refenestrator 5y ago
  Cultural sensitivity, you mean. If it mispronounced a random non-icon's name everyone would chuckle and forget about it. Pattern matchers don't understand culture, so this is gonna be a hard-coded workaround or intentional distortion of dataset to try and achieve the hard-coded workaround.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  The comment i was replying to straight up claimed this was done with intent. I agree with you, the algorithm needs to have more context sensitivity as you say. But nobody at google is getting their rocks off making the AI mispronounce things on purpose. Especially since, as anyone who used Google Maps in multilingual areas will attest, the algorithm is awful at dealing with context in general. It mispronounces tons of things. In Belgium it will switch between dutch and french names for streets randomly. Google Maps canonicalizes my address in Dutch, so whenever i input it on a website i have to deal with it "helpfully" "correcting" it to dutch. Which makes things difficult when I have to deal with French speakers... Google Maps has a lot of problems that are causing real harm to non-us cultures, which would likely get fixed with diversity. But i would never claim these things are done on purpose.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

There’s a Louis XIV Street in New Orleans (and I imagine elsewhere).

gibolt 5y ago
You mean Louis 'Ziv', according to Google
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Putting Louis XIV in Google translate, I get the correct "Louis the Fourteenth" and "Louis Quatorze" pronounciations in English and French, respectively. However, it has to be uppercased, otherwise it spells the letters.

throwaway675309 5y ago

Oh for Pete's sake, absolute bloody conspiracy level nonsense, NOBODY sat there twirling their villainous mustache and programmed an exception to hardcode pronouncing X as 10, it's simply a matter of the training and sample data having access to some type of corpus that contained a great deal of Roman numerals. (Leave the software engineering to the software engineers)

sandworm101 5y ago
>> to some type of corpus that contained a great deal of Roman numerals. I wager that there is more text online about Louis XIV than of Malcom X. Certainly there are many more books on that epic corner of French history than one modern US leader. Then there are all the British kings. Point an AI at the internet and it likely would decide that roman numerals are most often pronounced as number than letters. Malcom X would be rare an exception that might need to be hard coded.

wpietri 5y ago

For sure. If we're going with the common pronunciation of Roman numerals in English names, it's "Tenth". E.g., We don't say "Henry Ford III" as "Henry Ford Three" but "Henry Ford the Third".