I found this while browsing Reddit, and going past the first reaction of “this is terrible” I think it can spark an interesting discussion on machine learning and how our own societal problems can end up creating bad habits and immortalizing those issues when building such systems.

So, what do you guys think about this?

  • Flelk@lemmy.ml
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    4 years ago

    As a lifelong grammarian, I’ve always hate hate hated that English lacks a technically “correct” gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, and I’m frankly rather relieved to see an emerging consensus forming around “they.” It may seem awkward for now, but this is how languages evolve - a grammatical “error” gets wedged into a niche to serve a linguistic need. The change is already happening, and in fifty years no one will remember or care that it used to be wrong.

    • joojmachine@lemmy.mlOP
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      4 years ago

      Boy, I wish I could say the same for portuguese (my native language). It has the same issue but the second someone tries to bring the idea up they are instantly treated like the “twitter cancer trying to destroy our language”.