“Not all ‘screw ups’ are equal. Gender is a a big, big thing to get wrong," Lambert was quoted as saying. He says that Gmail has 1.5 billion users and Smart Compose assists on 11 percent of messages worldwide sent from Gmail.com. Lambert notes that the Smart Compose team of about 15 engineers and designers tried several workarounds, but none of them proved bias-free or worthwhile. “They decided the best solution was the strictest one: Limit coverage. The gendered pronoun ban affects fewer than 1 percent of cases where Smart Compose would propose something,” Lambert said. For Prabhakar Raghavan, who oversaw engineering of Gmail, “The only reliable technique we have is to be conservative.”