Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Google removes gendered pronouns from Gmail’s Smart Compose to avoid AI bias

Gmail’s Smart Compose is one of Google’s most interesting AI features in years, predicting what users will write in emails and offering to finish their sentences for them. But like many AI products, it’s only as smart as the data it’s trained on, and prone to making mistakes. That’s why Google has blocked Smart Compose from suggesting gender-based pronouns like “him” and “her” in emails — Google is worried it’ll guess the wrong gender.

Reuters reports that this limitation was introduced after a research scientist at the company discovered the problem in January this year. The researcher was typing “I am meeting an investor next week” in a message when Gmail suggested a follow-up question, “Do you want to meet him,” misgendering the...

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