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points by howunfortunate 9 hours ago | 0 comments

As another example, imagine if "trans women are" autosuggested "men" or "ugly" for the next prediction.

This would probably be a bad customer experience for many people, even if Apple could prove these are simply the most common n-gram completions.

And if they altered their training data to avoid completions that are politically unpalatable, IMO that's actually much much worse than a grey list.

I'm a big free speech guy but this one is genuinely a bit complex.

[–] briandw 7 hours ago

There is no winning here. It's impossible to make autocomplete inoffensive. In fact making it inoffensive, is offensive. theguardian.com would make Apple the bad guy no matter the policy choice.

[–] armchairhacker 7 minutes ago

They could make it a simple algorithm and publish it. Then if someone accuses Apple of being biased towards their word, they just get directed to the algorithm.

Of course, people will still accuse Apple of being biased. But they’ll be wrong, and never manage to prove it (unlike this guy), which I think matters.

[–] hnlmorg 6 hours ago

There is a way to win here: make it an opt out

- [ ] Disable autocomplete swear filter.

But finely grained options are not Apple’s way.

[–] Retric 2 hours ago

iOS has been steadily offering more options over time. And yes taken individually customization seems like the correct choice basically every time but eventually you end up with a mess.

Consider the logic for tap’s could offer hundreds of customizations. That’s core functionality and I’m sure someone internally is thinking deeply about many of them. But if you offer zero customization most people just get used to how things operate so skipping that functionality isn’t terrible for the average user. Instead they offer options for people with disabilities which is a distinct group who can’t just adapt and thus a meaningful justification.

[–] sam1714 6 hours ago

You'd end up with pages of options, especially once people realize they can get on the bandwagon.

Disable swears, alcohol, smoking, marijuana, gambling, child abuse and neglect, sensitive East Asian politics, sensitive Middle Eastern politics, WWII politics, Late Ottoman genocides, LGB issues, T issues, global warming, nuclear power, HOA issues, vegetarian issues, vegan issues...

[–] buran77 6 hours ago

I don't blame Apple for trying to straddle the line that makes everyone equally unhappy. But I steer away from autocorrect entirely so I'm not irritated daily by this like others may be.

Talking about autocorrect and irritation, I remember a situation where someone caused a minor international incident by writing that something "caused a lot of irritation". The word they were aiming for before autocorrect chimed in was "iterations" (on a document). I'd rather make my own mistakes than constantly have to fight an autocorrect system.

[–] cite_please 7 hours ago

That’s ok. I’ve already made theguardian.com the bad guy a long time ago so the two cancel out.

[–] Dylan16807 4 hours ago

The problem here isn't a mere lack of suggestion. If it treated that situation as a completely blank context that wouldn't get in the way of typing what you want to type.

[–] roenxi 4 hours ago

I don't even think it is complex; you can say what you like so there isn't a free speech issue here. Users are still going to type what they intended to type. Apple can reasonably have their software avoid making guesses about what users meant to say on charged topics.

It'd be a better if Apple provided a list somewhere for transparency but what they are doing isn't going to cause anyone any trouble.

[–] howunfortunate 3 hours ago

"It's really difficult and frustrating to type anything outside the Overton window, and really easy and seamless to type anything inside the Overton window" is definitely a form of soft censorship worth worrying about IMO.

[–] roenxi 1 hour ago

I am perfectly capable of expressing myself if HN's software allows me to misspell chauvenist and the idea that an iPhone needs a different standard should be totally rejected. That entire line of argument is distracting from the actual problems with censorship - people with power forcing the public discourse into nonsense and lies.

Promoting bad spelling and grammar is not a free speech issue.

[–] zahlman 46 minutes ago

> I am perfectly capable of expressing myself if HN's software allows me to misspell…

This isn't about "promoting bad spelling"; we aren't talking about "misspelled 'bad' words don't get autocorrected". We're talking about a system where you try to type a "bad" word and the system substitutes a "good" word unless/until you override it. Or a system where you effectively choose every word from a menu, and the "bad" words are hidden using UI "dark patterns".

[–] xenator 9 hours ago

Autocomplete should be following the user's own behaviour. If a user thinks that "trans women are men", then it will be not a universal experience, it is just this separated user's own statistics.

[–] hairofadog 8 hours ago

I can imagine that autocompleting following users' behavior could bite people who do a lot of sexting or could reveal other secrets, ex. `the door code is`

[–] howunfortunate 8 hours ago

This is a good solution but you still have to deal with the cold start problem for the ML

[–] throooooo 8 hours ago

Then you just don't suggest anything if there isn't enough data yet. Regardless, auto-complete suggestions is different from what TFA is about.

[–] conception 8 hours ago

Yes, please allow me to have corps not only know everything about me but have a hyper accurate way to know what I’m thinking as well.

Or we could just type the whole sentence we need.

[–] reorder9695 7 hours ago

Futo keyboard on Android has a transformer LM option that uses local ML for text prediction, I've found it to work very well. As far as I'm aware it's completely on device.

[–] SV_BubbleTime 4 hours ago

“Generated entirely on device” seems like an omission that doesn’t cover diagnostic, telemetry, “product improvement” logs.

[–] stavros 6 hours ago

A friend made a keyboard for iOS because he didn't like any of the existing ones, and it doesn't send any data anywhere: https://typeneuma.com

[–] alfjal 8 hours ago

That's asking a lot given the current state of the iOS keyboard.

[–] nostrademons 8 hours ago

It already does this. I've found it'll suggest my kids' names frequently, after just 1-2 letters. It didn't do this before they were born. I assume it's training on my previous messages.

[–] stackghost 7 hours ago

I never understood the memes about autocorrect until I got an iPhone. The keyboard is so much worse than GBoard it’s incredible.

[–] rafram 8 hours ago

> even if Apple could prove these are simply the most common n-gram completions

Tech-illiterate online mobs enraged by Apple “making a statement” will not stick around long enough to hear them argue about n-grams or whatever.

[–] bjourne 7 hours ago

> As another example, imagine if "trans women are" autosuggested "men" or "ugly" for the next prediction.

Or imagine if it auto-completed "the Holocaust is" with "a myth created by the ZOG"! I don't like these "imagine if X was Y" arguments because X isn't Y. Refusing to auto-complete "the occupied territories" (X) is really not the same thing as refusing to auto-complete antisemitism or group-based hate speech (Y). Argue whether X is right or wrong without changing the subject.

[–] howunfortunate 7 hours ago

> I don't like these "imagine if X was Y" arguments because X isn't Y

What you're really saying, perhaps without realizing it, is "I have zero empathy or theory of mind for people who have different views than me"

The whole reason these arguments exist is because power changes hands. If you like a rule only because the person currently wielding power aligns with you, you don't actually like the rule. You just like power.

[–] aucisson_masque 7 hours ago

Most people are not anti semitic.

Most people are not against transsexuals and gays.

There is no reason these kind of suggestions get pushed.

At least in the western civilization, I don’t see why it need to censor anything.

[–] sssilver 4 hours ago

Most people where?

In the Bay Area?

In the United States?

In the Middle East?

In India and China?

All of planet earth?