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> Cutting phrases like “whitelist/blacklist” and “master/slave” out of our vocabulary not only addresses years of habitual bias in tech terminology, but forces
by chrisfosterelli 5y ago
> Cutting phrases like “whitelist/blacklist” and “master/slave” out of our vocabulary not only addresses years of habitual bias in tech terminology, but forces us as writers and researchers to be more creative with the way we describe things.
> calling landlords “property owners” is almost worse than calling them “landchads,” and half as accurate. It’s catering to people like Howard Schultz who would prefer you not call him a billionaire, but a “person of means.”
"I like the tool because it removes others' words that I don't like but I don't like the tool because it removes my words that others don't like"
- nmilo 5y agoI think you're misreading. Nowhere in the article did the author say she "liked the tool" for removing whitelist/blacklist.
- awofford 5y agoObviously the former example is written in more positive language than the latter.
- glasshug 5y ago> On a more extreme end, if someone intends to be racist, sexist, or exclusionary in their writing, and wants to draft that up in a Google document, they should be allowed to do that without an algorithm attempting to sanitize their intentions and confuse their readers. The author does position themselves against algorithmic sanitization generally.
- skrbjc 5y ago"Being more inclusive with our writing is a good goal, and one that’s worth striving toward as we string these sentences together and share them with the world. “Police officers” is more accurate than “policemen.” Cutting phrases like “whitelist/blacklist” and “master/slave” out of our vocabulary not only addresses years of habitual bias in tech terminology, but forces us as writers and researchers to be more creative with the way we describe things. Shifts in our speech like swapping “manned” for “crewed” spaceflight are attempts to correct histories of erasing women and non-binary people from the industries where they work." This is a whole paragraph in the article where the author agrees this is good thing, just that google implemented it poorly.
- monkeybutton 5y agoWhy not use proprietor?
- causalmodels 5y agoBecause it leads to confusion. Example: Is the proprietor of a bar the person running it or the landlord who owns the building?
- akhmatova 5y agoActually, it is generally understood that the owner/proprietor of a bar is the business owner (aka license owner) -- and that this in general is not the same person who owns the bricks. A more clearcut case of semantic confusion I can see a crappy AI creating out of the blue would be: "My proprietor said if I didn't pay the rent soon she was gonna ..." Which clearly has a very different (and basically nonsensical) meaning than a the more natural formulation using the now thankfully forbidden L-word.
- causalmodels 5y agoAgreed, I was just trying give an example of why using proprietor would create confusion.
- akhmatova 5y agoRight -- the "bar's landlord" is in general not it's proprietor.