métraux& reposted this
Leadership Transformation Expert @ APS Intelligence. Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow British Psychological Society. Professor of Leadership University of Exeter Business School.
Dear Tech Giants, our names are more than just words - they are a fundamental part of our identity. They carry our history, our culture and our sense of self. Yet, in an age where technology is integrated into every aspect of our lives, our devices do not respect the importance of our names and we must consider that technology will always carry the biases of the people that create it. Names that are often deemed to be spelt ‘incorrectly’ are disproportionately of African, Asian, Eastern European, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish origin. If our technology does not view our names as equal, what message does that send to our peers? Everybody’s name deserves to be recognised. Important work here from I Am Not A Typo.
Spellcheck was never intended to tell you the "correct" spelling of anything. It's meant to flag words that MIGHT not be spelled correctly. In other words, it's alerting the human who makes the decisions that they should look more closely at something and verify it. As an editor, I'm rankled by the common misconception that spellcheck is the arbiter of correctness. Especially since it's so often wrong. For example, back in the old days, the word "cooperation" used to be autocorrected to "Cupertino" because apparently the city of Cupertino was more important to programmers than cooperation was. Adding every possible name's spelling to a spellcheck program would make it useless. Almost nothing would be underlined, and of the things that were, the list of possible replacements would be very long indeed. Spellcheck has enough problems as it is; adding more word possibilities will only compound those problems. Here's an idea: Add your own name to your spellchecker's dictionary, along with its possessive. You'll never be troubled by red squiggly lines again. And turn off autocorrect. It's not doing you any favors.
Spell checker was not designed for names and will never be used as such. Unless your name also carries another common meaning.. Smith, Black, Bucket... How can you reasonably expect any form of A.I. to identify them and treat them as such. My name is also underlined, but I do not see myself as being singled out for any kind of discrimination? I mean, let's be realistic here... most English people could not spell Welsh names as they are not even phonetically correct. This goes for Place names too. Even English ones. There are many things for people to feel discriminated about... This is NOT one of them. Come on people... let's regain some common sense. If you really want to avoid seeing your name without a red line, disable your spellcheckers. Is all Spellchecking software in English? i.e. Do all Chinese people have every single word they type underlined in red? No of course not. But English is the No1 Global Language so if you are writing something in English it will be spell-checked as such. If you are writing a non-English word (such as a name) then of course it will be red-lined. As for what message this is sending... It simply tells me that it is your name my friend... nothing more.
The more I read of this the more I found it represented a perfect snap shot of our society today where we as a Human race are so easily offended and looking for reasons to claim some form of discrimination. Technology is NOT perfect. If it was, the entire human race would be out of jobs. It is designed to make our lives easier, not to offend or discriminate against non-English named people. If you Turn your Spell checker off, the problem is solved, but then you create another one for yourselves (if you cannot spell that is). In order for a computer program to work efficiently it needs to follow algorithm rules. These rules are logic led and cannot account for things that originate without logic, such as names. What you are asking for is technically impossible and even if it were to be possible, it would create further problems. Spellchecker cannot work at all if it accounted for names. As almost any combination of letters could be a name. Have you even thought that through before you decided to create what I hope are A.I. generated 4m high Billboards?
Well, I have an Irish name, one I regard as really simple to spell but my family has a collection of typos from newspapers, letters, official documents, going back to the Straits Times in the 60s of it being misspelled so, it's not a technology thing. Names are individual, spelling of names can be a capricious thing and if it's corrected, move on, in the world we live in now, I don't think this is a major issue and we all have individual spell check setting to make sure we don't make the same mistake twice and a returned email is a sure guide to a typo!
John's posts once again bringing out the sealions and "let's be reasonable"-ists. It would be technically trivial to add all these names to spellcheckers, and no, it would *not* break spellcheck 🙄. My name is not all that common and generates the red line if I type it with a lower case "t". Priti should not generate a red line, and priti should... it's not rocket science.
Many years ago, I was asked in the presence of a senior colleague how I spelled my name. Not wanting to be a hassle, he made light of it and said my name looked like the leftovers in a bag of Scrabble tiles. These days, I’m that senior. Actually, no, I’m ten years younger and two ranks senior. And I sometimes make that joke about my name. But I remember how it felt, and I always, always ask. Sometimes, it’s a great conversation starter. What it always is, however, is a sign of respect, openness and courtesy.
Probably, I will disappoint many. This is victim mentality. I believe what I am or who I am. I don't bother who thinks what. They have their yard stick and I have mine. This happened to me , starting with the good old "where I am originally from question"...finally said I am not English. I said, "Do you know the names of 5 books of Charles Dickens or names of 10 British scientists, 3 recipients of The Victoria Cross and few more..." When that person could not reply, I said, "That makes us the same. You are not English as per me." To keep it light, I offered him some Scotch. Neutral ground you see...
A lot of people on this thread missing the point - the campaign is not about surnames but about first (given) names. Software dictionaries will be specific to the markets in which they are sold. Diversifying the dictionary for a broader range of ethnicities within a given market is not that hard to do. Believe me, I don't expect any standard-issue software to cope with Kuszewski, but I never have a problem with Judy.
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4moBlimey, John, did you send this one out and then hide behind the blast wall? Interesting to see much 'not an issue because I don't see an issue' commentary there is (anyone seen any Black Swans recently..?). Whilst not tech, I am reminded of a great UK 800m runner from the past, Ikem Billy, who ran abroad in Europe and, I think won a race, and was introduced as William Ikem. Not taking things for granted (sadly, not a strength of AI/tech) and asking is so important as many others have already said.