Google set to launch “woke” writing feature that suggests politically correct and “inclusive” terms during Google searches.
This month, Google launched its “inclusive language” function that will show Google users a warning when they type out words that are considered non-inclusive, like “housewife,” “businessman” or “landlord.” Instead, it would suggest alternative terms like “housemaker,” “businessperson” and “building manager.”
The warning will alert the Google user with a message that mentions that the term “may not be inclusive to all readers.” The new feature is powered by Google’s new “assistive writing” system.
The New York Post reports that writers at Vice tested out the feature. When they included a transcription of an interview with former Ku Klu Klan leader David Duke, his use of the n-word didn’t trigger the feature to suggest alternate, less offensive words. However, the Google feature allegedly took issue with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The function suggested that Dr. King should have replaced “the fierce urgency of now” with “the intense urgency of now.”
The New York Post reports the same thing happened with John F. Kennedy’s words “for all mankind.” Google says the new feature is still undergoing “ongoing evolution.”
“Assisted writing uses language understanding models, which rely on millions of common phrases and sentences to automatically learn how people communicate,” the representative said, per The New York Post. “This also means they can reflect some human cognitive biases. “Our technology is always improving, and we don’t yet (and may never) have a complete solution to identifying and mitigating all unwanted word associations and biases.”
