Word ‘Welsh' is offensive, says AI
Jake Oliver, 29, claimed an AI voice coach told him the speech he had written as best man for his friend's wedding could be offensive because he used the word 'Welsh'.
He was using Microsoft Teams' Speaker Coach to practice the speech, hoping to get feedback on his tone and speed, when he received the unusual feedback.
The voice coach told him the word 'Welsh' in his speech 'might be offensive or non-inclusive in some cases'.
The advice came despite Mr Oliver only referencing guests' nationalities in an unoffensive way. He said he didn't get a similar warning for the use of 'English'.
Mr Oliver claimed that he received the same unusual warning from an AI notetaker, a tool he was running ahead of a meeting when he discussed his weekend plans – the wedding – ahead of a Teams call with colleagues.
'I found it very odd'
Mr Oliver, a data analyst from Upton Park, London, said: 'It spooked me for a bit and I found it very odd. I don't know why Welsh is offensive, and we all agreed that it was not offensive.
'I told the groom afterwards, to get his views on the notification. He was taken aback by it and said that it was not offensive.
'He's very proud of being Welsh, and said he couldn't imagine being offended by the term.'
He claimed the words 'crazy' and 'insane' were also flagged because they could be offensive towards anyone with mental health issues.
'I've kept the AI feature on for now because I still find it useful for making sure I don't sound too boring in meetings, but I'm definitely taking its suggestions a bit less seriously since this happened.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
20 minutes ago
- BBC News
Campaign launched to save Northampton community hubs
Campaigners are demanding the permanent reopening of community hubs that were closed without Against Cuts has urged West Northamptonshire Council to take over Semilong, Briar Hill, and Bellinge community hubs, which closed on 9 July but have since been reopened by volunteers with support from Morris, who previously managed the spaces in Northampton, said: "I want to use my time to support my staff team and our service users, not be constantly on my laptop chasing donations and meeting with different funding sources."The council said funding for the hubs had come to an end. The Community Engagement Hub Programme, operated by Community Spaces Northampton (CSN), was originally launched with grant funding to help tackle isolation following continued for more than 18 months using the charity's own limited resources after core support from West Northamptonshire Council issued a list of demands, including that the council permanently funded and ran the hubs and that staff made redundant were re-employed on fair terms. They also called for a worker- and union-led investigation into the financial handling of the hubs under Simpson, chair of Northampton Against Cuts, said: "Staff, volunteers and service users have a right to know what has happened to the funding for the hubs."A council spokesperson said: "The funding in question was from a grant allocated to support with the impact post-pandemic, focusing on mental wellbeing and tackling insolation. "This funding grant came to an end. However, since 2021, CNS have received over £153,000 in grant funding via various funding pots to support a number of programmes and initiatives." Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Bedford Borough Council applies dog controls to more areas
A council has applied restrictions on dogs to more locations because of worries about fouling and "nuisance behaviour".Bedford Borough Council has approved an expanded Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO), which sets out controls ranging from complete bans to where dogs have to be kept on locations covered by the PSPO include a swan nesting area at The Embankment, where leads must now be to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the authority said the measures addressed persistent anti-social behaviour, including dog fouling, which a report said had a "detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality". 'Health risks' The PSPO came into force on 27 July. It extended dog bans to 30 additional play areas, sport pitches, and green included Biddenham, Shortstown, Roxton, and well as The Embankment area, dogs must now be on leads on the playing field in the village of Cotton End and the recreation ground in council report explaining the changes recognised the vast majority of dog owners were it added: "Residents are concerned about dog fouling in particular and are worried about the amount of dog fouling, not just because of the mess it causes, but because it can also be linked to health risks, especially with children who play in the parks and open spaces."Since 2019, the council said it had received 968 complaints related to dog fouling, but only about 90 fixed penalty notices had been additional restrictions followed requests from parish councils and also responses to a public consultation held in April. About 79 per cent of respondents backed the renewal of the PSPO and 77 per cent supported adding new for assistance dogs and their handlers remain. Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The AI revolution is here to make you stupid
Despite the downsides, AI offers a seductive promise to companies driven by bottom lines: cost-cutting. Yet what may flatter the balance sheet in the short-term could cost them in future. 'Managers tend to systematically underestimate the expertise needed to do the work of their employees, meaning that they may classify more work as replaceable or deskilled than is appropriate,' one metastudy led by Professor Kevin Crowston of Syracuse University cautioned. In seven cases studied by Crowston where AI had been used, six experienced some deskilling, even alongside upskilling and efficiency gains. An examination of call centre staff in the study Generative AI At Work led by Erik Brynjolfsson showed greater gains amongst the lower skilled, penalising the higher skilled. If managers are metric-obsessed, they'll be tempted to dispense with the skilled staff quicker. Once again, the firm deploying the AI becomes less capable and more stupid. In a widely circulated essay that went viral this spring, called The Co-Pilot Delusion, a highly skilled software developer described his experience with an AI assistant he knew was deeply flawed. 'I got lazy. Of course I did,' he confessed. 'When the system forces you to code with a hallucinating clown, eventually you stop resisting. You let him type. You let him be 'productive'. You check out. You surrender your brain to the noise and just float.' Warp speed warning So what to do? In Forster's story, when The Machine glitches people are so in awe of it that they treat the issues not as a crisis but as divine wisdom. They've turned it into a deity. Are we doing the same with generative AI? The novelist Ewan Morrison, whose new thriller For Emma revolves around a fatal AI experiment, thinks so. 'I think we in our naivety have bought into all the hype,' he says. 'But integrating AI into healthcare, the military and education means introducing something with an error rate of between 33pc and 90pc. The Government is introducing factual errors into everything it touches.' Such warnings are falling on deaf ears. Tech companies are in a hurry and have found a willing servant eager to do their bidding in the Labour Government. AI will cut waiting times, identify bottlenecks and even make services 'feel more human', the Government claims in its AI Action Plan. We have even been told that the technology can stop prison riots before they even start, such is its omniscient power. MIT's Kosmyna is sceptical. 'Generative AIs do not show objectively any gain in productivity, any gain in scientific discovery or any gain in employee performance – but we are told we have to implement them in such an aggressive manner,' she says. 'What are we afraid of missing out on, exactly?' While Britain is embracing AI at warp speed, there is a healthier scepticism in Asia than in the technocrat-driven West. 'Tony Blair has been convinced there's a ghost in the machine, but the Chinese, and in Singapore, they don't believe that for one minute,' says Georg Zoeller, a former Facebook engineer based in Singapore who advises governments and is also VP of technology at a healthcare start-up. He adds: 'Eighty per cent of decision makers and people crafting the laws in China are Stem [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] graduates who understand the technology, and the industry is being regulated by the best people, and they are integrated into both policy and technology.' James Woudhuysen, visiting professor of forecasting at South Bank University, agrees with Zoeller that the quality of our policy elites makes them more reluctant to assess societal and human harm. 'There are many more engineers in the upper echelons of Chinese society who understand technology, and understand what AI really is, than there are in Britain,' he says. 'The tendency to personalise or anthropomorphise AI, to see it as a constant and wise friend – that's a Blair legacy. They don't understand technology at all.' A decade ago, the Finnish accountants realised there was something precious in the corporate ether – the company's value was in its intangible knowledge capital. It could not be replicated by software, even if the daily tasks could be. Perhaps if we refuse to believe AI is magic, we'll be wiser about its obvious and not so obvious flaws. Unfortunately, policymakers in the West have been overtaken by a desire to make machines seem magical. If we're getting dumber, then we can hardly blame the AI for that. We've done it to ourselves.
