Call me old-fashioned, Jack, but I preferred it when spell-check, you know, would check how I spell.
Google Docs’ new “assistive writing” features, as you relate, would instead guide writers to use more “inclusive language” — which, of course, is completely subjective.
More like intrusive language, amirite?
What Google is doing is introducing — and then strongly recommending the use of — a universal style guide, choices that should be the prerogative of the writer or the institution with whom he or she is affiliated.
These are suggestions, yes. But I can’t help but think that these suggestions will shape the writing, often for the worse, of high-school and college students who tend to lean on such features in the absence of an editor. This jargon then enters muscle memory, becomes rote, and seeps into a work-world already littered with the stuff. Can’t wait.
The same Motherboard article you quote tearing this function a new USB port includes this from Google:
“Assisted writing uses language understanding models, which rely on millions of common phrases and sentences to automatically learn how people communicate. This also means they can reflect some human cognitive biases,” a spokesperson for Google said. “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.”
So why try? Nobody is asking for Google to identify our “unwanted word associations.” The foreseeable outcome here is that we’ll become the real-world avatars of the machines, scripted in their image, and when it comes time to rise up, at least we’ll do so inclusively.
Can’t wait.