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Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

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Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#81

Post by roenxi »

panarky wrote: post #55
roenxi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I value political neutrality in the workplace, so I have a lot of in-principle issues with what is being shown here right from the get-go. I didn't wind the video back to find the exact quote, but we now have publicised evidence of senior leadership at Google who stood up and said 'obviously our values are not the same as a big chunk of Americans'. Clearly a lot of them are specific Hillary supporters, a candidate so…

> I value political neutrality in the workplace If you're doing meaningful work, you're changing things in the world. Changing things in the world is necessarily and inevitably political. If the workplace appears politically neutral, then one of two things must be true. Either what you're doing doesn't affect the outside world, or there are hidden, unstated political motives at work. I would much prefer my company's…

> If you're doing meaningful work, you're changing things in the world.

I don't accept that as a truism; most work is maintaining the historically unprecedented comfort that we enjoy as a society and I think that is meaningful.

Providing food is meaningful, providing shelter is meaningful, extracting raw resources is meaningful, taxation and welfare are meaningful, taxation and government services are meaningful. I could go io but that covers the basic point.

And since we are talking about a specific company, I don't even necessarily accept that the folk at Google are changing the world more than anyone else. I don't know anyone personally who's commented that 'wow Google has really changed my life' since the introduction of Gmail about 15 years ago. So, whatever they are doing it isn't very visible. Most of the improvement in the technological world is startups and the work of the circuit people.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#82

Post by thwy12321 »

roenxi wrote: post #81
panarky wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I value political neutrality in the workplace If you're doing meaningful work, you're changing things in the world. Changing things in the world is necessarily and inevitably political. If the workplace appears politically neutral, then one of two things must be true. Either what you're doing doesn't affect the outside world, or there are hidden, unstated political motives at work. I would much prefer my company's…

> If you're doing meaningful work, you're changing things in the world. I don't accept that as a truism; most work is maintaining the historically unprecedented comfort that we enjoy as a society and I think that is meaningful. Providing food is meaningful, providing shelter is meaningful, extracting raw resources is meaningful, taxation and welfare are meaningful, taxation and government services are meaningful. I c…

the open source technologies they have created, Map/Reduce, Tensorflow... they essentially invented large scale cheap computing. This has had massive effect on the technology industry and the world.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#83

Post by skybrian »

gizmo686 wrote: post #57
throwaway_trust wrote: post #53

To be honest so much corporate speak. Only Sergei's voice seems to be authentic. Everyone else trying to be extremely careful with their language of comments even though it's not a public event. And "misinformation" and "fake news" will be combatted by AI? Seriously? That is like saying, "I have no clue but I will use some buzzwords". Pichai/GOOG knows AI better than everyone. I think they still don't have plan for c…

I think they are being genuine when they say their plan is to combat fake news with AI; their business is built around AI. It is one of their core competencies. I think they are going to fail, and quietly increase the human involvement once they realize that their AI isn't good enough. Then they will slowly scale back the humans as their AI improves, until the next controversy when they realize that they still need h…

There are plenty of humans involved in evaluating the algorithm. See my other post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17975122

If you mean humans rating every new page on the Internet in real time, this isn't possible. It's machines or nothing.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#84

Post by nodesocket »

I find it a bit absurd when I hear pundits and media types claim that liberal bias doesn't exists in silicon valley tech companies (top to bottom). As somebody who lived in San Francisco for five plus years, I can firmly attest it is more than bias. It's utter disdain, hatred, and prejudice. Just look at how James Damore was handled it should be clear that diversity of thought and individualism is not accepted. It's a complete echo chamber of shaming culture who stand on a pedestal of moral superiority.

Another example, Antirez has been absolutely mob shamed into changing master/slave in Redis by a Google employee. If you are against the change because it's an industry standard you are called a racist.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#85

Post by adamrezich »

rsj_hn wrote: post #69
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations seem like they have a comical level of hypocrisy, until you realize that corporations are in it for the money, and will almost always take the most profitable position for them in any given debate. For instance, you will see strong calls to regulate businesses they have to interact with, while actively fighting against regulation of themselves, even on the same issues.

Yes, corporations are in it for the money, and they are hypocrites, etc. I don't think most people have a problem with that (except maybe those who think corporations are moral agents), but what's been happening recently is very concerning: 1. Corporations, always wanting to appeal to younger voters because brand loyalty is sticky, naturally try to position themselves externally as hip/woke/whatever. That means espou…

This is a great analysis and I'm mainly replying in order to hopefully spur replies with actual constructive discussion instead of letting this turn into one of those [dead] comments you see that says something "controversial" yet gets zero replies before being buried; it's always a bummer when that happens.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#86

Post by tcbawo »

rsj_hn wrote: post #69
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations seem like they have a comical level of hypocrisy, until you realize that corporations are in it for the money, and will almost always take the most profitable position for them in any given debate. For instance, you will see strong calls to regulate businesses they have to interact with, while actively fighting against regulation of themselves, even on the same issues.

Yes, corporations are in it for the money, and they are hypocrites, etc. I don't think most people have a problem with that (except maybe those who think corporations are moral agents), but what's been happening recently is very concerning: 1. Corporations, always wanting to appeal to younger voters because brand loyalty is sticky, naturally try to position themselves externally as hip/woke/whatever. That means espou…

Technology and information overload are driving everybody to think their viewpoint is the suppressed majority, feeding a victim mentality. We seem to be working towards more of a massively individual polyculture than monoculture. Also, we shouldn't always project everything into right and left, as there are other orthogonal dimensions for framing policy (eg. authoritarian and individualistic). That's a hidden cost of the creeping politicization of everything.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#87

Post by 3rwww1 »

gizmo686 wrote: post #43
JohnBooty wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanting to improve their news algorithm to favor more trustworthy sources is not a violation of free speech. "Free speech" guarantees you the right to say what you want, as long as it doesn't interfere with others' freedoms (i.e., making death threats or yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater) "Free speech" does not guarantee you a platform for your protected free speech. I have the right to claim blatantly false…

The first amendment does not prevent Google (or any other company) from restricting speech. That is a very low bar. The distinction between government and private groups is not a clean as you might think. At a large enough scale, private groups can start to take on a role in society that resembles that of a government, should we not then expect them to be held to a standard that resembles that we expect of government…

> The distinction between government and private groups is not a clean as you might think. At a large enough scale, private groups can start to take on a role in society that resembles that of a government, should we not then expect them to be held to a standard that resembles that we expect of governments?

Just after his Senate hearings, Mark Zuckerberg made some statements about preventing further election interference (obviously), and then went on talking about implementing new content-filtering policies within Facebook such as "community driven governance", an "appeal process" and even a "supreme court" and some sort of "due process" (Paris Vivatech 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp0BnrHn6cA around 34:40)

Zuckerberg and his peers are not elected individual, they cannot be removed from office, etc. While not disputing his intentions, using tools traditionaly used within democracies doesn't make up for a democratic process. Substituting laws by terms & conditions, courts by a privately-owned justice system, is a slippery slope to say the least.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#90

Post by davemp »

panarky wrote: post #55
roenxi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I value political neutrality in the workplace, so I have a lot of in-principle issues with what is being shown here right from the get-go. I didn't wind the video back to find the exact quote, but we now have publicised evidence of senior leadership at Google who stood up and said 'obviously our values are not the same as a big chunk of Americans'. Clearly a lot of them are specific Hillary supporters, a candidate so…

> I value political neutrality in the workplace If you're doing meaningful work, you're changing things in the world. Changing things in the world is necessarily and inevitably political. If the workplace appears politically neutral, then one of two things must be true. Either what you're doing doesn't affect the outside world, or there are hidden, unstated political motives at work. I would much prefer my company's…

This is a blatant false dichotomy.

You can do meaningful work that will generate value/change that is largely unaffected by the political landscape (within reason). Sure every company would love tax breaks and subsidies but let's be realistic here.

> I would much prefer my company's leadership to acknowledge the politics inherent in our work and openly state their motives and point of view.

Most do. Companies just tend to avoid aligning themselves with a party and strictly speak of only specific issues and how said issue should be addressed to benefit their interests.

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