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AI at Google: our principles

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Re: AI at Google: our principles

#331

Post by aepiepaey »

themacguffinman wrote: post #173
mtgx wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a public standard that they're setting for themselves. They already had a public standard that people actually believed in for a good many years: *Don't be evil." They've been palpably moving away from that each year, and it's been obvious in their statements, documents, as well as actions.

"Don't be evil" is incredibly vague and practically meaningless. What the hell is evil, and since when did everyone agree on what evil means? It's obvious to you that they're getting "evil", it certainly isn't obvious to me.

Even disregarding the issue of how "evil" is defined, there is another level of vagueness: when does one become evil, as opposed to only doing some evil? Arguably, one could do some amount of evil deeds without actually being evil.

The above is sometimes mentioned in discussion, were people point out that the motto is "don't be evil" and not "don't do evil".

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#332

Post by belorn »

cromwellian wrote: post #267

Several comments don't seem to understand what the "unfair bias" mentioned is. It doesn't have anything to do with censoring your favorite conservative search result. The machine learning "bias", at least the low hanging fruit, is learning things like "doctor == male", or "black face = gorilla". How fair is it that facial recognition or photo algorithms are trained on datasets of white faces or not tested for adversa…

Even for the low hanging fruit there is some concerns that the bias correction will only be made based on view of those currently in power at Google. They might want to make sure that translation AI will make careers like scientist, engineer, doctor to not get associated with male gender, but will Google do the same for crime and criminals? Google may want to steer YT recommendation AI away from the damsel in distress trope, but will it do the same for the bumbling dad trope?

In current polarized climate there isn't much trust left that bias correction will be itself unbiased, or if it will reduce existing discrimination rather than doing the opposite.

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#333

Post by t1lthesky »

mattlondon wrote: post #328
philwelch wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a geopolitical level, it does. It's far better for the world that the United States developed atomic weapons before either Germany or the Soviets did.

> It's far better for the world that the United States developed atomic weapons before either Germany or the Soviets did. [citation needed] The US having nuclear weapons didn't work out so well for the 70,000-120,000 innocent civilians that were killed in the attack on Hiroshima.[1] I don't have handy access for how many innocent civilians were killed in Nagasaki but I would assume it was similar. Would the Nazis hav…

Come on are you really making this argument? That we cant know if it was better for the USA or Nazi Germany to have nuclear weapons? Like, say you have to go back in time and give nuclear weapons to Nazi Germany or the USA during ww2.. you would throw up your hands and say we can't know who the weapons should go to?

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#334

Post by irb »

taneq wrote: post #330
staticassertion wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make it ok to be the one to fill it.

Is it better to develop weapons tech for your own in-group, or to risk being on the receiving end of weapons tech that another group developed and against which you can't defend yourself due to your earlier principled stand?

I don't think it's a given that if you don't develop a certain type of weapon it renders you unable to defend yourself against it.

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#335

Post by brandonsometig »

rmk wrote: post #305
joshuamorton wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's quite common in other industries In what other industries does the government require companies to develop military technology? >A corporation can easily set up a division or a separate subsidiary or sub entity and staff it with willing individuals to do this sort of thing. So you're saying that if I found a company that is based on internet-related technologies, it is reasonable to at some point in the future…

> In what other industries does the government require companies to develop military technology? The canonical example is the early days of aerospace, where for all practical purposes you were developing military technology. > So you're saying that if I found a company that is based on internet-related technologies, it is reasonable to at some point in the future compel me (or compel me to pay for someone else) to wo…

> BTW, Cisco and a few others have been forced to develop 'lawful intercept' technologies on their routers for the three-letter agencies for years, I think. There was a big controversy about this a few years ago.

And you seem to be arguing that this is a good thing? Surely any company (filled with people) should be free to work on whatever technologies that those people feel is ethically right.

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#336

Post by plankers »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #253
killjoywashere wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would your default stance be to believe a company over a leaker? Because Sundar Pichai has a strong public track record. Every CEO ends up with warts, but I have some sense of what he's about. The leaker, I have zero information on. Given known vs unknown, I put more faith in the known. Whether I by default believe or disbelieve depends on who's saying what.

Many of the Googlers involved in the campaign against Project Maven are engineers of high caliber and those I know of are fairly activist in general. While I haven't always agreed with those I've interacted with, they're high quality people with high quality records. The sort of Googlers protesting Maven are the sort of Googlers who made Google the sort of company people loved. And they've put their careers on the li…

I don't know how accurate it is to say that these engineers have put their careers on the line. It could also be that they wouldn't be able to make these statements were they not secure enough in their jobs to feel their careers wouldn't be on the line.

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#337

Post by brandonsometig »

rmk wrote: post #272
Daishiman wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . It's regrettable, but Americans as a group have strived to rectify wrongs and steer our country in the right direction. I deeply cherish our American values and think they're what set us apart from the rest of the world. Ha. Ha ha. Hahahah. Please, keep drinking that Kool-Aid of American exceptionalism. Apart from the British, which other country has contributed to more invasions in foreign countries for the sake…

> Please, keep drinking that Kool-Aid of American exceptionalism. Apart from the British, which other country has contributed to more invasions in foreign countries for the sake of purely economic interests? I will! Which country came to the aid of Britain, and all those Western European nations when they were faced with the existential threat of Nazism? Which country has provided refuge and solace to more oppressed…

> Which country came to the aid of Britain, and all those Western European nations when they were faced with the existential threat of Nazism?

Russia mainly, from where an estimated 24 million people died. American also didn't wade into a war through purely selfless means either, if Germany managed to invade Britain and western Europe, America would have been at significant threat.

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#338

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

outworlder wrote: post #273
EpicEng wrote: post #55

So, I'm all for giving someone the benefit of the doubt if they have a change of heart upon reconsidering an issue, but this coming after the fact rings a bit hollow to me. I think the only principle at play here is that it became a PR issue. That's fine, but let's be honest about it. Early emails between Google execs framed this project only in terms of revenue and potential PR backlash. As far as we're aware, there…

Is that all? 250M/year is still peanuts for a company like Google.

It’s 250M a year for now.

Considering the size of the global arms trade, it’s very unlikely to stay 250M a year for long.

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#339

Post by simion314 »

RyanZAG wrote: post #318
marricks wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Looking at drone strike causualities you’d have no clue how much the US even tries. Its funny cause I haven’t heard of large scale Chinese or Russian drones flying over other countries targeting terrorists but ending up murdering children on more than one occasion. Perhaps these technologies can be just evil and the US is the only country powerful enough to get away with using them. I really have no stomach f…

If you ever end up in a war with China, you'll be seeing plenty of drones. Obviously China doesn't use drones for killing terrorists - China doesn't kill terrorists because terrorists have no way to get into China in the first place.

So if China does X US can do it too, also if China could do X but we do not know for sure then US can also do X.

Using this logic then US can do anything with the exception of the things you are 100% sure China(or insert other country here) is not and will not do it.

This means surveillance, killer robots, black magic,genetically enhanced humans, illegal experiments and procedures, is a valid tool for US because "what if we have a war with China, we must have same tools as them"

Re: AI at Google: our principles

#340

Post by ionised »

Aunche wrote: post #192
iainmerrick wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they really believed this stuff, I don’t see why they would have had so many resignations over the issue. Had somebody brought up the ethical aspects when the project was being discussed, they wouldn’t be scrambling to limit the damage now.

A few people resigned and they're trying to limit the damage because people like being outraged at things that don't matter. It's the same thing that got James Damore fired.

AI-powered drone warfare doesn't matter?

What does matter in your world?

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