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Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#211

Post by Kalium »

anarchodev wrote: post #114
Kalium wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be great if we could have one big union that fights for the rights of all workers, and if you think so too you should look into joining the IWW. Given how often the interests of various workers can and do conflict, this strikes me as an idea possessed of a wonderful opportunity to come into greater alignment with reality. As are those who advocate it. I always ask would-be tech union organizers the same qu…

If your understanding of unions begins and ends in terms of what's "in it for me" then I'd urge you to rephrase the question: "what's in it for us?" And then expand "us" to the people you care about. As it turns out, quite a lot. In the original article, we're potentially talking about the safety and privacy of hundreds of millions. In more day-to-day union campaigns, you'd be organizing so that your coworkers can ha…

> If your understanding of unions begins and ends in terms of what's "in it for me" then I'd urge you to rephrase the question: "what's in it for us?"

Respectfully, and with a heavy heart, I must decline to do so. I am not interested in some nebulous "us", doubly so one that is poorly defined. I want to know how a union will improve my life. It's far too easy to sacrifice me in the interests of "us". After you, my friend.

I do not want to hear how a union will improve the safety and privacy of hundreds of millions. That's the job of governments. I want to hear about how a union will improve my privacy and safety. I want to hear about how this union will unconditionally have my back. I want to hear how you propose to make sure that a union doesn't turn into another way to bully, harass, and sit in arbitrary moralistic judgment of workers.

Alternatively, tell me how your union will expel - and render unemployable - practicioners who through ignorance, negligence, and recklessness endanger the safety and privacy of hundreds of millions. I have worked with more than a few engineers in my time who have been guilty of that. No warnings, no slap on the wrist, just up-front education and swift, harsh incentives to be careful and not fuck up. I know, I know, unrealistic and cruel, right? No need to wreck someone's livelihood, right?

You're absolutely right, of course. It's in every way about taking back control. You'll have to excuse me if I'm reluctant to take it back from one faceless and unaccountable group that doesn't care about me so I can hand it to another faceless and unaccountable group that doesn't care about me. That seems like a needlessly complex way to not solve the problems at hand.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#212

Post by wan23 »

mempko wrote: post #66
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) but it's not promoted or advertised near enough in my opinion to people in the field.

This! I think what I'm going to start doing is to not take any computer professional seriously unless they are an ACM or IEEE member (or similar org in your country). EDIT: Getting downvoted, clearly not a popular opinion. Are people here not interested in having a strong corporate-independent organization to push the industry forward?

Yeah, even if the ACM or IEEE are not the organizations we need (and I'm not sure if they are or are not), we would be better off if we had a professional organization dedicated to promoting responsible practices.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#213

Post by mempko »

neilv wrote: post #115
mempko wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EFF, FSF, ACLU are all great organizations. ACM is unique here though because it's specifically a professional organization meant to push the industry forward. EFF, FSF, and ACLU are great and should be supported but aren't as broad as ACM.

If the ACM is really pushing professionalism and ethics now, that's great. I've actually been a member or contributed to all the organizations either of us mentioned, and EFF has seemed to me likely a better predictor, but that's just a guess.

My biggest issue with EFF is that they often take pro-corporate positions and is lead by many actual executives and former executives (see board of directors https://www.eff.org/about/board), while the ACM comes more from an academic or tech worker strain (see https://www.acm.org/about-acm/officer-bios).

So while I agree with the EFF on many policies, their corporate leanings are a turn-off and isn't, imo, a solid ground for people doing day to day work in computing.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#214

Post by anarchodev »

Kalium wrote: post #211
anarchodev wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your understanding of unions begins and ends in terms of what's "in it for me" then I'd urge you to rephrase the question: "what's in it for us?" And then expand "us" to the people you care about. As it turns out, quite a lot. In the original article, we're potentially talking about the safety and privacy of hundreds of millions. In more day-to-day union campaigns, you'd be organizing so that your coworkers can ha…

> If your understanding of unions begins and ends in terms of what's "in it for me" then I'd urge you to rephrase the question: "what's in it for us?" Respectfully, and with a heavy heart, I must decline to do so. I am not interested in some nebulous "us", doubly so one that is poorly defined. I want to know how a union will improve my life. It's far too easy to sacrifice me in the interests of "us". After you, my fr…

These are good questions to ask of any union IMO. Workers wouldn't join a union they felt didn't advance their interests (and anecdotally, there's gotta be a reason union members are crazy about unions, right?) So this is good to investigate.

Perhaps purporting to look out for the interests of an entire nation is too broad for any one organization. Some questions about your assignment of responsibilities that I think will clear things up: what if, hypothetically, the government was run by a ruling class who would leverage your need for income, healthcare, etc., in order to make you build things you didn't want to build? And specifically speaking of surveillance technology, what if you suspected they were building these tools for other countries as a trial run to later use on their own citizens? It's not that far-fetched.

Otherwise, I think you have some great questions to ask of any union you're considering to represent you. But you're also representing them -- if you felt like you wouldn't get a say in what collective actions were taken, that's not a union I'd encourage you to work with. I specifically mentioned mine because I know their track record and philosophy and would like to see more of it. There's no hierarchy, no inaccessible higher realm of bureaucrats making the decisions, it's workers all the way down! Ask your local branch about it. Although there are often differences in opinion, bullying or harassing workers is not tolerated.

Will it immediately and permanently improve your life? This ain't a fad diet and I won't market it like one, it's a chore sometimes honestly. I don't go to meetings and pay dues because I love it all the time. But I've seen results, and seen how much those in power want to keep us from realizing our collective ability to win some of their power through organizing. And I think you'll agree that the trajectory we're currently on is grim. Think it over.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#215

Post by laughinghan »

stendinator wrote: post #82
3xblah wrote: post #57

"We are a small - as-of-yet unincorporated - nonprofit providing pro bono consulting on algorithmic and policy issues arising from the proliferation of: Statistical inference / Automated decision making - often called 'AI', ..." From the author's website, listed at the bottom. Imagine if journalists and other people posting to the www called "AI" what it actually is, instead of constantly portraying it as something f…

How would you rewrite that short passage in a way you think is optimal?

Your parent comment was praising that passage and wishing more journalists and others would take that as an example of how to describe about AI.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#216

Post by Kalium »

anarchodev wrote: post #214
Kalium wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your understanding of unions begins and ends in terms of what's "in it for me" then I'd urge you to rephrase the question: "what's in it for us?" Respectfully, and with a heavy heart, I must decline to do so. I am not interested in some nebulous "us", doubly so one that is poorly defined. I want to know how a union will improve my life. It's far too easy to sacrifice me in the interests of "us". After you, my fr…

These are good questions to ask of any union IMO. Workers wouldn't join a union they felt didn't advance their interests (and anecdotally, there's gotta be a reason union members are crazy about unions, right?) So this is good to investigate. Perhaps purporting to look out for the interests of an entire nation is too broad for any one organization. Some questions about your assignment of responsibilities that I think…

I've known union workers who love it and I've known union workers who didn't. Both are common enough to be impossible to generalize from beyond opinions being as diverse as people.

Anyone who says "there's no hierarchy" is, without exception, wrong. All they actually mean is "there is no explicit hierarchy". There's always an implicit one. The big difference between the two is generally accountability - explicit hierarchies can have it structured in. Implicit hierarchies get to say "We're all just workers here!" to dodge accountability.

> And I think you'll agree that the trajectory we're currently on is grim. Think it over.

You're right. I do agree. That said, I also grew up in a place where short-sighted unions helped turn a thriving industrial area into a post-industrial wasteland.

Just because one course is grim doesn't mean I want to trade it for any other course.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#217

Post by walshemj »

dmix wrote: post #76
walshemj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why large Unions represent a diverse set of members take Prospect (UK) which represents people in a very diverse set of industry's.

How has Prospect helped the wider world related to their work? Which I believe is what this article is about, not workers rights. (Genuine question) Wikipedia says it’s a trade union for “scientists, managers, and engineers” with 140k members across quite a few industries. No mention of what they actually do though.

It was about combining divergent technical professionals together.

And the previous president Denise was also president of Uni which acts to support workers world wide eg the rights of garment workers and also supporting the victimised organisers of the google walkout.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#218

Post by walshemj »

stale2002 wrote: post #78
walshemj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why large Unions represent a diverse set of members take Prospect (UK) which represents people in a very diverse set of industry's.

To give an analogy, I as an engineer need to write a lot of documents sometimes, but nobody in their right mind would suggest that I should be forced to join the writers guild, in order to be allowed to write an essay. The same thing applies to coding.

Why would you?

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#219

Post by int_19h »

Retra wrote: post #209
int_19h wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see "asking everyone with a sense of ethics to quit" software development , though. I'm seeing a call to refuse working on things that are unethical. Most software engineering does not involve working on projects that have immediate side effects that significantly impact human rights and freedoms. To build on your police analogy, this is about asking police officers to refuse to enforce policies such as "stop…

You can't ask individuals to make that decision; they'll just be replaced with ones who are willing. Leadership needs to agree with you. You can't ask people to work at a place while undermining their companies' business plans.

Of course you can ask individuals directly working on such stuff to make that decision. Implementers (who are aware what they're implementing) are just as much responsible for it as the people who gave them directions. In fact, this is just a rehash of the "just following orders" defense, except in this case it's not even orders, since you can walk out on them.

Not only that, I seriously doubt that Google would punish anybody who would simply request to not work on that particular project, instead of accommodating them by reassigning to a different team. So this is a very low bar to clear.

Does it mean that somebody else will do it? Probably, but responsibility matters. If you're the one who assists in illegal or unethical activities, then you're personally responsible for them.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#220

Post by ohyes »

closeparen wrote: post #157
ohyes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume that a hypothetical future government that you find yourself living under is not good. Assume furthermore that a future hypothetical company is equally not good and the two collude to do not good things together. Now assume you’re motivated to do something about it. Sucks for you, they have already predicted that and cleansed you because they know everything you’ve ever read and it was a high probability that…

Does increased government authority over the tech industry make abusive access to its data and eyeballs less likely, or more likely? How would such a collaboration start? My money's on "It sure would be a shame if we audited the shit out of your infrastructure and hit you with everything we can find in the 500,000 page rulebook... or you could do me this one favor." Doing something about a bad government is called te…

Abuses are just that. If a corrupt person is using the law corruptly in order to achieve something illegal, and getting away with it, that is something we should root out. Including your hypothetical racket.

Creating laws to prevent the population from being abused and manipulated via big data is somewhat orthogonal to that, as it would be a separate set of laws. we can’t not do something just because it might be abused by those implementing it. We have to include reasonable limits to the powers we grant.

We don’t do away with all rule of law because it is occasionally abused, we prosecute the abusers under said laws and create new laws when loopholes are inevitably found.

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