7+ 402 vs. The 1st Amendment ...

Illustration: WIRED; Getty Images

We all swear as the use of foul language has been part of culture since the beginning of time as epithets, when properly used, convey meaning in the clearest and most suscinct way possible. From Shakespeare to the esteemed Georg Carlin, the ability for man to get it on regarding the expression of emotion through the use of dirty words knows no bounds. 

LDNOOBW

List of Dirty Naughty Obscene and Otherwise Bad Words

 With this in mind, it seems the connect to digital and AI regarding said epithets is inevitable.

COMEDIAN GEORGE CARLIN had a list of Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV. Parts of the internet have a list of 402 banned words, plus one emoji, 🖕.

Slack uses the open source List of Dirty, Naughty, Obscene, and Otherwise Bad Words, found on GitHub, to help groom its search suggestions. Open source mapping project OpenStreetMap uses it to sanitize map edits. Google artificial intelligence researchers recently removed web pages containing any of the words from a dataset used to train a powerful new system for making sense of language.

LDNOOBW, as intimates know it, has been a low profile utility for years but recently became more prominent. Blocklists try to bridge the gulf between the mechanical logic of software and the organic contradictions of human behavior and language. But such lists are inevitably imperfect and can spawn unintended consequences. Some AI researchers have criticized Google’s use of LDNOOBW as narrowing what its software knows about humanity. Another, similar, open source list of “bad” words caused chat software Rocket.Chat to censor attendees of an event called Queer in AI from using the word queer.

Carlin change history ... for the better.

The seven dirty words are seven English-language curse words that American comedian George Carlin first listed in his 1972 "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" monologue.[1] The words, in the order Carlin listed them, are "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "cocksucker", "motherfucker", and "tits".[1][2]

I don't know that there was a "Eureka!" moment or anything like that. [...] On these other things, we get into the field of hypocrisy. Where you really cannot pin down what these rules they want to enforce are. It's just impossible to say "this is a blanket rule". You'll see some newspapers print "f blank blank k". Some print "f asterisk asterisk k". Some put "f blank blank blank". Some put the word "bleep". Some put "expletive deleted". So there's no real consistent standard. It's not a science. It's a notion that they have and it's superstitious. These words have no power. We give them this power by refusing to be free and easy with them. We give them great power over us. They really, in themselves, have no power. It's the thrust of the sentence that makes them either good or bad.[4] - George Carlin - 2004] 

The 1st Amendment, the most important Amendment of them all.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Any questions?