Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

Now, you feed AI with crime data, looking at statistics such AI will suspect people having black color of the skin to be criminals more often than people with white skin. Is that ok? Is it ok to say that if some person happens to have black skin there is a bigger chance that it is criminal?

In statistical terms the answer is yes, but if we deal with an actual person, we should treat it as a unique person and the matter of the skin color should not matter.

Before II World War there were scientific studies in Germany that showed that in some big cities districts there are more rats. Accidentally or not, it turned out that those are districts with large Jewish population. So Nazis took those statistical results to prove that Jews are dirty, spread diseases, etc. Was that science, even though it was peer reviewed and published? Rather not (in the first place they didn't even bother to check if people living there were rich, poor, etc.).

History knows many "scientific researches" by the ones like Eugen Fisher, dr. Mengele, that were performed in a scientific way, but they were lacking something very important and non-trivial: ethics.

Now the problem is that ethics needs to have some source, it does not grow on a tree. For ages Christianity was a source of ethics in Europe (less in US, that's why you could have slavery in modern times there), currently Christianity is almost gone in Europe, the question is were to seek the source of ethics.

These are not equivalent comparisons to me. Tobacco was always harmful, inhaling smoke in general is just bad, and the others could be through improper use but safe otherwise. Let alone all of what you mentioned will not have the impact AI will

AI's potential is equally good and equally bad and any of the bad is purely because someone or some group employs it that way.

The real danger of AI isn't the obvious tinpot dictators using it drive war but in politicians and government officials hiding behind the term as an excuse for their bad decisions. The more you demand of your government to give you stuff or services the more likely you will be subject to this tech

I say this each time the subject of AI abuse, facial recognition or similar comes up.

This is not something that cancel culture will stop. Nothing is going to stop it from coming. So the best alternative to the technically and morally (hate using that word) driven people is to hit it head on from all directions. This means working to make sure it does what it is supposed to do but also that everyone knows what it really cannot do, working the legal end to insure there are laws and consequences for employing the technology incorrectly, and through the information end in keeping the public fully aware of who is using, how they use it, and how to legally protect yourself from it.