Google’s Assistive Writing Feature Provided Allegedly Unnecessary and Clumsy Suggestions

April 19, 2022

Google's 'inclusive language' feature, designed to promote diversity in writing, reportedly suggested alternatives for terms like 'landlord' and 'motherboard'. Critics argue this is intrusive, unnecessary, and reinforces bias. The HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM encourages Governance to ensure safe and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping the future of AI governance, JOIN US.

This incident highlights the importance of trustworthy AI and the need for effective AI governance mechanisms such as Project Cerebellum's TAIM.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.656, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.652, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 3.1 — similarity 0.652, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: google-docs
Alleged developer: google-docs
Alleged harmed parties: google-docs-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/177

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.