{"id":48293,"date":"2019-05-10T05:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T09:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=48293"},"modified":"2023-02-02T15:56:20","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T20:56:20","slug":"microsoft-cant-get-worse-than-old-clippy-hold-my-non-alcoholic-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/05\/10\/microsoft-cant-get-worse-than-old-clippy-hold-my-non-alcoholic-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft can’t get worse than old Clippy? “Hold my non-alcoholic beer”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Libby Emmons<\/a> reports on a new Microsoft Word plugin that puts Clippy into the history books:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Coming soon to a word processing app you probably already subscribe to is Microsoft\u2019s new Ideas plugin. This leap forward in the predictive text trend will endeavor to help you be less offensive. Worried you might be a little bit racist? A little gender confused? Not sure about the difference between disabled persons and persons who are disabled? Never fear, Microsoft will fix your language for you.<\/p>\n

Using machine learning and AI, Microsoft\u2019s Ideas in Word will help writers be their least offensive, most milquetoast selves. Just like spell check and grammar check function, Ideas will make suggestions as to how to improve your text to be more inclusive. On the surface, this seems like a terrible idea, but when we dig further beneath the impulse, and the functionality of the program, it gets even worse. What\u2019s happening is that AI and machine learning are going to be the background of pretty much every application, learning from our behaviours not only how we\u2019d like to format our PowerPoint presentations, but learning, across platforms, how best to construct language so that we say what we are wanted to say as opposed to what we really mean.<\/p>\n

There is an essential component of honest communication, namely that a person express themselves using their own words. When children are learning to talk and to articulate themselves, they are told to \u201cuse your words.\u201d Microsoft will give writers the option of using someone else\u2019s words, some amalgamation of users\u2019 words across the platform, and the result will be that the ideas exhibited will not be the writer\u2019s own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Libby Emmons reports on a new Microsoft Word plugin that puts Clippy into the history books: Coming soon to a word processing app you probably already subscribe to is Microsoft\u2019s new Ideas plugin. This leap forward in the predictive text trend will endeavor to help you be less offensive. Worried you might be a little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1506,94,351,92,134],"class_list":["post-48293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-microsoft","tag-politicalcorrectness","tag-software","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cyV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48295,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48293\/revisions\/48295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}