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Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

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Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#141

Post by csomar »

frutiger wrote: post #131
csomar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are severely under-estimating carbon based life forms. These were designed for over millions of years in differing circumstances. Humans are not the only carbon based life form. A bacteria might not be that smart but it'll pro-create it's way to create the human, or its equivalent depending on the environment. In my opinion, carbon based life forms are the most optimized solution to the problem. It'll be very har…

> These were designed for over millions of years in differing circumstances. Designed or occurred by accident?

Designed by randomness?

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#142

Post by darkhorse13 »

epylar wrote: post #22
mc32 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, on the one hand, yes, they need direction. On the other hand these kinds of people are by definition leaches. Their existence hinges on this thing being an issue. So I can't feel bad for them. Now, I can see them as a volunteer advisory group. That I'm for. But I loathe seeing all kinds of "industries" pop up that are essentially leaching from businesses. Most "training" kinds of curricula and outside exper…

How do you feel about maintenance programmers, doctors, and car mechanics?

Absolutely not the same thing.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#143

Post by runarberg »

anonylizard wrote: post #19
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

These sorts of adjunct, off-to-the-side "ethics" teams are always corporate window dressing, and when push comes to shove they always get jettisoned when competition demands an increase in speed. I don't mean to start a flame war, but this is a reason why I think "Chief Diversity Officers" are such an ill-conceived notion. It's not that I don't think diversity in corporate environments is extremely valuable, but it's…

This. People should understand AI safety != AI ethics. AI safety has two branches, AI ethics and AI alignment. Those two branches despise each other with intense passion. The alignment branch (responsible for developing RLHF->ChatGPT) believes AI ethics is completely trivial, and distracts attention away from existential risks. The ethics branch (responsible for all the media attention about racist AIs/bias etc) view…

Aren’t you revising history a bit here? I recall early facial recognition model having pretty hard time with dark skinned faces, I remember early models reflecting gender stereotypes, etc. In fact I remember the ChatGPT team putting tons of engineering into supervised learning to not let it fall victim to regurgitating these biases.

The history that I remember very much did experience AI biases and racism. And tons of ethical questions were indeed raised as a result. These concerns did come to pass, at an alarming level, and it took a tremendous amount of engineering to modellers to minimize those. Let’s not rewrite history here.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#144

Post by JohnFen »

g42gregory wrote: post #136
karpierz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The product teams don’t care. As I said, you can't patch over culture problems with a re-org. If product people don't care, putting a person on the team that works against their interest will not make things better. Same thing with security/diversity/code quality/reliability. If the team doesn't care, putting an enforcer on the team will not fix the situation.

There is an implicit assumption that the teams are wrong. What about the wisdom of the crowds? If most teams think it's not needed, why do we think they are wrong?

I don't see it as an implicit assumption that the teams are wrong, but a recognition that the teams have a fairly narrow goal that can easily blind them to larger implications of design decisions as they "move fast and break things".

Having some sort of outside check on that seems wise to me.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#145

Post by narrator »

peppermint_gum wrote: post #83
paramount wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think the push for ethics in AI is important. As much as these functions do get sidelined in the prioritization process as outlined in the parent comment, the intent of introducing the rigor is valid.

I agree AI ethics is important, but unfortunately, the field is dominated by frauds. Do you remember the drama[1] with Google's AI ethics team? Here's a sample of the "research" they were producing: https://s10251.pcdn.co/pdf/2021-bender-parrots.pdf [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timnit_Gebru#Exit_from_Google

Google has been having a hard time making an LLM product. It's sad to see them having this sort of ordering the burning of the ships of Zheng He moment.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#146

Post by JohnFen »

HervalFreire wrote: post #107
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

These sorts of adjunct, off-to-the-side "ethics" teams are always corporate window dressing, and when push comes to shove they always get jettisoned when competition demands an increase in speed. I don't mean to start a flame war, but this is a reason why I think "Chief Diversity Officers" are such an ill-conceived notion. It's not that I don't think diversity in corporate environments is extremely valuable, but it's…

This is a rosy way to put it. The real reason is this, corporations don't give a shit about ethics. Ethics exist to appease the public, employees and the law. If ethics get in the way of profits then fuck ethics. That's the way it works. What "AI" is at the leadership level is bullshit. It either makes money or it doesn't. The leaders are beholden to shareholders and shareholders in aggregate have the mob mentality o…

This. It's a pretty clear statement of what the company's ethical stance actually is.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#147

Post by Claudus »

kmeisthax wrote: post #86
bitL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they had something similar; compare Windows/Office vocabulary to Unix vocabulary and you can see which one is more polished/curated and which one is weird/rough.

Dave Plummer specifically talked about how they had to change "Kill" to "End Process" in Task Manager for this exact reason.

Yet notice, behind the facade, taskkill runs.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#148

Post by JohnFen »

icapybara wrote: post #78
qudat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in this case. If intelligence always created intelligent machines that are capable of replacing us, then how is that not intelligence as well? Further, silicon-based lifeforms would be able to spread and travel the universe much easier because what is time to a machine?

Some machines might last longer than us but they are still subject to the same laws of thermodynamics. Most computers from 20+ years ago are inoperable today; show me a machine that can survive millions of years.

> Most computers from 20+ years ago are inoperable today

Mostly because they were dismantled or destroyed. Most computers that old that were left unmolested still work just fine.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#149

Post by JohnFen »

fnimick wrote: post #2

A key point from the article, when the VP of AI was asked to slow down to make sure AI could be done safely: > “Can I reconsider? I don’t think I will,” he said. “Cause unfortunately the pressures remain the same. You don’t have the view that I have, and probably you can be thankful for that. There’s a lot of stuff being ground up into the sausage.” A reminder that business will always, always choose profit and compe…

This is the best argument for muscular governmental regulation that I've heard.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#150

Post by anonytrary »

HervalFreire wrote: post #114
anonytrary wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a Chief Diversity Officer to fix a lack of diversity in my mind is no different than having a Chief Culture Officer to fix a poor company culture. Those sorts of problems can only be solved as the collective sum of every individual employee's actions. For example, if a large team of male engineers are all saying no to equally talented female candidates, then you've just hired shitty people. A diversity figureh…

No this isn't true. Human psychology is much more complicated then shitty people and good people. Aspects of both being a complete ass hole and being a good person exists in the psychology of everyone. Little rules and arrangements from the top can serve to bring out the best in people. In the same way cities and cultures can be shaped by laws and rules so can people within corporations.

That's not how it goes down in practice, where a Chief Diversity Officer's job is to control diversity, rather than to let it flourish. The only "rules and arrangements" that trickle down from the top are the biases, actions, and behaviors of senior leadership. They are the ones who really set the examples. A company with a Chief Culture Officer sounds like one where the leaders are not interested in culture. That's why they hired someone else to "handle" it.
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