One, AI mediation of language sees issues like bias amplification (AI learns our biases then suggests them back to us). Google itself wrote about this recently [1].
Two, spell check has a homogenizing effect on spelling [2]. If you extend this to the level of phrases, that will homogenize not just spelling but the very way we talk.
To add a third, I have a problem with my personal emails being used as a corpus of text to train these models.
Maybe they're using only my emails to train a model for me, and turning that feature off disables them doing so. Maybe they're using everyone's email to train a generic model.
Of course, they've been (machine) reading your emails to provide ads since forever, so in that sense maybe this isn't really that new. That said, many people habituated to email reading for ads back when Google's brand image was riding higher.
> highly anonymized global corpus of consumer email.
I read this as confirmation that, if I were a Gmail customer, that you would indeed be using my personal emails to train your models.
For me, I then have to wonder what "highly anonymized" means in this context. Does this means that users' emails are put through yet another processing pipeline to separate emails into anonymous / not-anonymous buckets or to redact personally identifying information?
[H]ighly anonymized global corpus of consumer email.
What do you mean by "highly anonymized"? What specific privacy notion are you using, and what is the (demonstrably unavoidable) tradeoff you are de facto threading between utility and privacy?
Yup, I forgot where I read this, but I believe all Gmails are eligible for the model. Again, forgot where I saw this, but Google takes great precaution to protect your data from human inspection, but being used in the corpus is fair game.
Doesn't have to be "enterprise". Anyone can pay $5/mo for GSuite (https://gsuite.google.com), which includes gmail and a ton of other tools. Furthermore, it's on your own domain rather than @gmail.com, which is not only better (you truly own the email address), it's also a hell of a lot more professional and makes it easier to migrate to other services if you wish to.
To put it bluntly, if anyone here is complaining and has an @gmail.com address, email me and I'll be happy to help you buy your own domain and create MX records to either gsuite or fastmail. But I just can't hear the empty negativity anymore from consumers who say "no! bad google!", yet, by using the free product, keep making their emails available for the AI models and keep signaling to Google that an advertising business model works better than a paid-per-user one.
Why can’t I buy gmail and just use regular @gmail? Would love all the features of GSuite, but a custom domain name I would pay even more to avoid. Unless you’re running a business, it looks bizarre. For some in the development industry / those who write technical blogs I can imagine that being useful at times, but still......
Go to https://gandi.net and buy a domain name you like with your name in it. I recommend something with your last name. <lastname>.me is a good one, or something more clever if you like.
It doesn't look bizarre, trust me. It looks extremely professional. Even on CVs, this alone will get you past some filters. And the domain name is $5-10 USD / year, it's nothing.
Go to https://admin.google.com - there's a lot of cool stuff you can do there that isn't usually possible in a regular Gmail account, including for example recovering emails and drive files up to 3-4 weeks after they've been deleted.
That's a generous offer, and one that I'd echo. If anyone is unsure where to start, or wants some advice, I'll be glad to help you with domain registration and email hosting MX record setup.
I don't think this is true. When our large university switched to gmail, all I could find was that they said they would not use our emails for targeting advertising. Seems like that leaves a lot of other possibilities like profile creation (they just won't use it to target ad at you), machine learning of all types, cross correlation with my personal email for who knows what, etc.
One, AI mediation of language sees issues like bias amplification (AI learns our biases then suggests them back to us). Google itself wrote about this recently [1].
Two, spell check has a homogenizing effect on spelling [2]. If you extend this to the level of phrases, that will homogenize not just spelling but the very way we talk.
[1] https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/text-embedding-mod...
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00313#references