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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Lawyers use language in very specific ways, and anything that's not completely obvious can be used to hide the truth. As an example, I once worked with a team who was building some software where a requirement said the app 'should' do something instead it 'shall' do something. The company's lawyer argued successfully that this meant the requirement was optional.

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That's how Internet standards work.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt

This was a contract between two companies, written by a product manager and a CEO. It wasn't a technical RFC.

This choice of wording in systems engineering is not ambiguous, and should effectively means optional. These words are often in capital letters trying to highlight the importance of it. It is absolutely not limited to RFCs, and is often used in a software specification.

Product manager and CEO _should_ know better. It's very understandable that they don't - and I have empathy for them, but unfortunately they're wrong.

Sure, and hence the company won. The point here is that language can have very specific meaning. There is a difference between 'should' and 'shall', even though most people would think they're effectively the same. If I said "You should complete that task" to one of my team I'm not really giving them the choice and leaving it up to them. I'm telling them to do something. Outside of RFCs and contracts language is a bit ambiguous and lawyers use that to their advantage.

In exactly the same way, there is also a difference between 'is' and 'was', and I think it's totally plausible that a Google lawyer might use that to hide the fact they used GMail data to train AI in the past.

That doesn't mean they did. It only means I wouldn't be surprised if someone proves they did, and that their lawyer used the tense of a response to try to hide it.

Even in general english, 'should' is less strong than 'must' or 'shall'.

_must_ tbqh lmao

'Should' and 'shall' is standard contract language. But, when it doubt, define the terms in the contract.

The Highway Code in the UK is full of “must” and “should” indicating firm requirements and optional choices. The use of “should” is a softer method of persuasion, in the same way signs say “Please close the door” not just “Close the door” which is an instruction. This aligns with the famous British politeness - or at least that is how I interpret the wording.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but "It is not trained on Gmail data." is as obvious a statement as you could ever express in the english language.

Not only that but this tweet is from Google Workspace and so it is not at all unreasonable to say it is not trained on Google Workspace Gmail and it says nothing about public gmail. Words. We have them.

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