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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

#231

Post by kalium-xyz »

AstralStorm wrote: post #197
heretoo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that lead's toxicity has been known for thousands of years.

Lead toxicity was limited due to it not being sprayed about with fumes out of the exhaust of every vehicle, and then number of those vehicles being low. It got quickly somewhat regulated away. (But not 100%.) AI toxicity... We don't even know the risks. There's potentially no limit to the damage. We have some examples (metrics making echo chambers, automated classifiers giving people wolf ticket for no reason, amplif…

Same risk as hiring a troll farm now

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#232

Post by onos »

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.

In fact, studies find that the current variant of diversity training is making people beHave in more biased ways. So what you’re saying is true: if you want people for be less biased in their actions, avoid today’s en Vogue style of diversity training.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#233

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #200
swyx wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no evidence? none? Google Lambda and Bing/Sydney are not at least incrementally closer to evidence?

> Google Lambda and Bing/Sydney are not at least incrementally closer to evidence? No, in the same way that boiling water in a kettle is not incrementally closer to inventing the fuel for a rocket ship. You can, in hidsight do a linear connection of water boiling -> steam engine -> fuel engine -> aeronautics -> space travel But the first time someone boiled water, if you said that got you closer to being on the moon…

Except, in your example, boiling water did get us closer to the moon :)

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#234

Post by prepend »

piokoch wrote: post #171
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…

Chief Diversity Officers is a cheap PR. You can be a company that forces its employees to piss into bottle as you punish going to toilet, but if you have Chief Diversity Officer, you change your logo once a year to rainbow colors then you are considered to be a progressive, well-behaved company. I don't even blame companies for this, they are just optimizing, if public is so stupid that it is buying it then, well, wh…

Chief Diversity Officer also help increase the ratio of underrepresented populations in company officers without having to change any existing officers.

If the goal is to increase minority positions, then you can do this by hiring new officers to replace attrition. This takes a long time and constraining available candidates for key positions is probably frowned upon.

Or you can add a new position, increasing the denominator and numerator but likely hitting your diversity ratio target (ie going from 1:8 existing officers to 2:9 helps in dashboards and whatnot).

And of course, I think these positions do have the potential to improve topics across the organization.

I think it’s the easiest step to make and makes a non-zero positive effect, so are so common.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#235

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

ETH_start wrote: post #196
piokoch wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chief Diversity Officers is a cheap PR. You can be a company that forces its employees to piss into bottle as you punish going to toilet, but if you have Chief Diversity Officer, you change your logo once a year to rainbow colors then you are considered to be a progressive, well-behaved company. I don't even blame companies for this, they are just optimizing, if public is so stupid that it is buying it then, well, wh…

It's not so much about keeping the public on its side as dispelling the notion that it has created a hostile work environment for any particular protected class, in the event that a lawsuit is brought against it by the anti-discrimination industry: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/wokeness-as-saddam-sta... >>Even after the case has been litigated, we still do not know what exactly Tesla could have done to avoid…

The names I'd let people call me for $137M...

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#236

Post by IIAOPSW »

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…

It sometimes does. I asked craiyon for "praiseworthy homicide" and got a bunch of mugshots of black people. For once the faces werent blurred. it was strange and probably a niche error from an odd prompt.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#237

Post by sebzim4500 »

college_physics wrote: post #210
dmix wrote: post #115

Anyone paying close attention to the output of generic "AI ethics" people (especially on Twitter) should not be surprised that companies that when push comes to shove the businesses getting actually useful AI tools that are being tested by real people for real things generating real data, are starting to question the utility of the bulk of the crowd who skirted off hypotheticals for years to build their reputations a…

> Microsoft is very aware thanks, that is comforting > the cat is out of the bag even if you don't like it thanks for bullying us around > the legitimately talented AI thinkers who exactly authorised you to project legitimacy in a space that has not seen any regulation?

>thanks for bullying us around

Who is bullying who exactly?

>who exactly authorised you to project legitimacy in a space that has not seen any regulation?

He's using the second meaning of 'legitimate'

   able to be defended with logic or justification; valid.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#238

Post by IMTDb »

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?

I personally love them; because when something is broken according to my standards, I ask them to fix it and they try !

"Ethics guys" insist of fixing stuff when it's broken according to their standards, even if I don't want/need them to.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#239

Post by IIAOPSW »

worrycue wrote: post #74
anonylizard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> this has not caused mass social harm despite the tens of millions of users Isn’t it a bit early to tell? I can foresee ChatGPT being used to farm “karma” on social media sites to bot accounts to credibility on sites like Reddit - maybe even HN.

I just took a reverse Turing test with GPTina and she concludes I'm probably human because I'm idiosyncratic in my speech and imperfect in my grammar.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#240

Post by revolvingocelot »

ironSkillet wrote: post #224
ketzo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is like claiming lead ethyl in gas “hasn’t caused mass harm” in 1954. There’s absolutely zero way to know that yet.

The problem with measuring the "harm" of something like AI vs e.g. lead is that with lead there are direct first order chemical harmful effects that are indisputable. With AI, any harm will get expressed via complex social dynamics, which involve so many other variables as well.

Which can be written off as laziness or just-world fallaciousness! Even consequences like "first order chemical harmful effects" are mostly ignored by the great-great-grandparent's "economists, lawyers etc"; the way AI will help concentrate money and power in the already overstuffed upper classes will barely be acknowledged.
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