The story you linked either omits the information or buries it deep enough to obscure the _actual_ source of the controversy. I was living in Chicago at the time, and the scandal wasn't the name choice, it was the fact that Aloha Poke sent cease and desist letters to other poke shops across the country demanding that they remove "aloha" from their names:
> the Chicago-born restaurant chain whose attorneys sent cease and desist messages to poke shop owners in Hawai’i, Alaska, and Washington state demanding they change names by dropping the terms “aloha” and “poke” when used together. While Aloha Poke contends it sent notes in a “cooperative manner” to defend intellectual property, Native Hawaiians feel the poke chain is trying to restrict how they can embrace their own heritage.
I should definitely hope so! Though I think the name would cause a stir in local circles even without any legal actions. Tech companies in general are deeply unpopular here (see: Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerburg, and Marc Benioff buying up big chunks of land, AirBnB and digital nomads driving up rental prices so high such that more native Hawaiians now live on the mainland than in Hawai`i, and perceived lack of cultural respect from projects like the Thirty Meter Telescope leading to major protests).
The other thing is that words have a lot of power in the cultural frame, even just the concept of aloha being something that could be "unleashed" is likely to offend.
All to say nothing off the palpable fear people have here of robots taking hospitality industry jobs like housekeeping (which are unionized in many hotels out here, and are actually one of the few low-barrier-to-entry jobs out here that can support a reasonable quality of life)
I'm sure I'll get a ton of downvotes for bringing up cultural sensitivity and pointing out these concerns -- I don't mean to imply they're all 100% rational nor that no one should say "aloha" unless they're Hawaiian, but if anyone at DeepMind had a Hawaiian cultural frame I think they likely would have flagged these concerns and recommended a different name.
bastawhiz|1 year ago
https://chicago.eater.com/2018/7/31/17634686/aloha-poke-co-c...
> the Chicago-born restaurant chain whose attorneys sent cease and desist messages to poke shop owners in Hawai’i, Alaska, and Washington state demanding they change names by dropping the terms “aloha” and “poke” when used together. While Aloha Poke contends it sent notes in a “cooperative manner” to defend intellectual property, Native Hawaiians feel the poke chain is trying to restrict how they can embrace their own heritage.
math_dandy|1 year ago
taylorfinley|1 year ago
The other thing is that words have a lot of power in the cultural frame, even just the concept of aloha being something that could be "unleashed" is likely to offend.
All to say nothing off the palpable fear people have here of robots taking hospitality industry jobs like housekeeping (which are unionized in many hotels out here, and are actually one of the few low-barrier-to-entry jobs out here that can support a reasonable quality of life)
I'm sure I'll get a ton of downvotes for bringing up cultural sensitivity and pointing out these concerns -- I don't mean to imply they're all 100% rational nor that no one should say "aloha" unless they're Hawaiian, but if anyone at DeepMind had a Hawaiian cultural frame I think they likely would have flagged these concerns and recommended a different name.