161–170 of 315 posts
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That fiasco earlier this year with James Damore comes to mind.
Damore was fired for perpetuating gender stereotypes. Even he confirmed it. That isn't unique to Google, and employee policy is not manipulation of search results.
Disclaimer: I work for Google. I also think that there is an anti-Google bias on hacker news, holding Google to a standard not applied to others and taking any excuse to roll out the same old tired rants in response to almost any Google post (DAE Google Reader etc). If what I read is true then this is the first thing that has truly rocked my confidence that the company generally tries to do the right thing (while mak…
Just some editorial advice: put the lede in the first paragraph. The disclaimer should be lightened up, unless that's what you want people to engage with. Edit: I wrote this because I was sad that people were arguing with the disclaimer, not the author's more substantive point. I don't mean to be patronizing or condescending in any way.
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I installed Chromium on Ubuntu today, and on the first run was given an opportunity to opt out from Google's personalized ads being shown to me based on my entire web browsing history. It was that moment when I realized, that what I had just installed was not primarily a web browser, but a Google application with a web browsing feature built-in. Because everything in it was built to optimize Google's ad revenue. It e…
I am so saddened by how much we trust Google. I wish we regarded Google software with more suspicion. Would people have been nearly as upset if it had been Google that acquired GitHub? I miss the days of being suspicious of Microsoft. But Microsoft isn't nearly as diabolical as Google, nor are they as competent.
There are a lot more they can track than the search history. Google maps app has a timeline feature that tracks every place I go :)
You can turn that off here, FYI: https://myaccount.google.com/u/1/activitycontrols
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> The new version of Chrome signs you into the browser even if you don't want to sign into the software itself. You can't really use Google's browsing device (Google Chrome) without providing your identity, if you ever want to sign into a Google website. It doesn't sounds like you've actually tried this. It doesn't sign you into anything but the google website, just like before. You have to turn on browser sync to si…
I've tried it multiple times and logging into a Google website automatically logs you into the browser itself (not just the website). Trying to clear cookies now doesn't clear Google's cookies either. Chrome 69.
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I readily acknowledge that it is perfectly legal to aid the PRC in imprisoning and torturing dissidents.
You keep making these arguments using hyperbolic examples that have little or nothing to do with what Google might (depending on how the internal politics work out) end up launching. Predicting the future is tricky, particularly when it involves the decisions of complicated political processes where the decision-makers (most likely) disagree. Plans often change. We can't possibly know what they're going to do. Maybe…
I certainly hope that Google doesn't follow the same path! But US tech companies have been complicit in human rights abuses in the past, so the public has every reason to remain vigilant.
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Damore was fired for perpetuating gender stereotypes. Even he confirmed it. That isn't unique to Google, and employee policy is not manipulation of search results.
Do you have a source of him confirming it? Genuinely curious. I'm just going off of his interview with Joe Rogan.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/8/16106728/google-fire...
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If you leak your company's plans to rob a bank to the press, you're still a whistleblower, even if the bank hasn't been robbed yet. Whistleblowers are under no moral or professional obligation to let people become victims before coming forward. If supplying search history to a government known to imprison or torture dissidents is an immoral activity, then bringing it to light is whistleblowing. You can make a cogent…
That would be a better argument if they were planning to do something illegal.
Leadership was actively advancing the project and promoting obscurity / secrecy. Sundar did not act to mitigate risks of harm to free information and dissidents. People were not given enough clarity to make good moral decisions.
The entire project reeks of a top-down ethics violation. You can't with a straight face introduce AI ethics guidelines, while you have backdoor meetings with need-to-know engineers building a surveillance and information manipulation system.
An objective party within Google should work hard to protect Google's values. To me, an outsider, Sundar can't be trusted anymore on responsible ethical AI (and by extension: AI itself). Probably some misaligned incentives there.
> As a leader in AI, we feel a deep responsibility to get this right.
So get it right. Start by fixing the wrongs and keeping consistency with your messaging.
Or tell me how the planning of a opaquely censored, dragnetted, privacy-intruding, and authoritarian-friendly search platform is consistent with:
1. Be socially beneficial.
2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.
3. Be built and tested for safety.
4. Be accountable to people.
5. Incorporate privacy design principles.
7. Be made available for uses that accord with these principles.
We will work to limit potentially harmful or abusive applications.
We will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:
Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.
Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.
Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.
Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.
The only thing consistent with the AI ethics guidelines (a plan going forward, already abandoned on release) is the pledge to technical excellence. I am sure, as the leader in Search, that Google is able to build a fine custom solution for the Chinese government.
Disclaimer: I work for Google. I also think that there is an anti-Google bias on hacker news, holding Google to a standard not applied to others and taking any excuse to roll out the same old tired rants in response to almost any Google post (DAE Google Reader etc). If what I read is true then this is the first thing that has truly rocked my confidence that the company generally tries to do the right thing (while mak…
So, here's an honest question: How do they find people to work on these products if the general consensus is that this is a bad thing to do? How do they keep word of these projects from spreading within the company? It seems if enough people feel strongly about this, then at least one would quit after being assigned to this project, and even if there's an NDA and they can't relate the details of why they quit, it wou…
This last thesis is illustrated with an alarmingly clear image. The same actor, each time at a washroom sink, introduces himself as a worker, a student, an engineer. As an engineer, carrying a vacuum cleaner in one hand and a machine gun in the other, he says, "I am an engineer and I work for an electrical corporation. The workers think we produce vacuum cleaners. The students think we make machine guns. This vacuum cleaner can be a valuable weapon. This machine gun can be a useful household appliance. What we produce is the product of the workers, students, and engineers."
From an introduction to Harun Farocki's "Inextinguishable Fire": https://www.harunfarocki.de/films/1960s/1969/inextinguishabl...
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That report doesn't say that Apple no longer retains control of the keys.
Nobody said that Apple no longer retains control of the keys. The point is that the Chinese government has access to Apple user data and Apple is complicit.
The Chinese government has the exact same access to Apple user data as before, which is through Apple. Who controls the keys is what matters.