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Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#31

Post by ben509 »

ETHisso2017 wrote: post #13

It's worth remembering that most of the directly attributable harm we associate with tech was created by small entities like the NSO Group and Cambridge Analytica. Instead of conscientious objectors applying pressure to large companies, it might be better for tech employees who come across small companies doing shady activities to report them. Many times, these smaller firms are more susceptible to pressure anyways,…

Being smaller, though, those companies can simply be up front about what they do during recruiting and people who don't like it won't sign up for them. Succinctly, prudes don't work in porn.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#32

Post by geofft »

Aunche wrote: post #10

Tech needs fewer conscientious objectors, not more. These people rarely know anything about what they're protesting, and resort fearmongering and populism to get what they want without even attempting to resolve things civilly. The most recent example is Google's AI ethics council debacle. Activist employees were so stubborn that they can't won't even let people have a discussion about AI ethics because one of them h…

> Half the authors of the American Constitution thought that slavery should be legal, but they managed draft the foundation of modern day democracy anyways.

This is a story of democracy happening in spite of the founding fathers, not because of the founding fathers. It was, as you may know, a long (multiple centuries) and bloody (a pretty big war, plus lots of extrajudicial lynchings etc.) road from what they drafted to universal suffrage. It's still in progress in many ways, and a lot of people were hurt in the progress. So this seems like a pretty good argument that we should not let people who have views that are contrary to the long-term goal be setting the direction of how to get to the long-term goal.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#33

Post by currymj »

mfoy_ wrote: post #3

I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anyt…

The ACM is basically this, they even have a code of ethics. People just aren’t very involved in it though outside of academia.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#34

Post by saagarjha »

throw2016 wrote: post #30

Discussions about ethical, privacy, surveillance issues often get hand waved and diluted here. See yesterday's thread on Google's retaliation as an example. We need a diversity of communities that can represent the the software industry in more dimensions than the VC funded side of things, growth hacking and the singular focus on success that are often in heavy conflict with any kind of value dimension and ultimately…

> Discussions about ethical, privacy, surveillance issues get hand waved and diluted here.

Do they? I tend to find that Hacker News often has a lot of discussion of ethics, especially with respect to technology.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#36

Post by closedgrave »

0815test wrote: post #7
carom wrote: post #6

I am honestly surprised that Dragon Fly is the last straw for people at Google. The company is the embodiment of surveillance capitalism. Why is there no talk about changing that model? It just seems the activists there are piling on the "China Scary" bandwagon (see: Huawei and ZTE losing hella business due to US pressure) rather than changing the revenue source in order to improve privacy and reduce data collection.

Do people actually care about privacy or data collection these days, though? It's not clear that most do - see the amount of people who freely interact on Facebook, even though they surely must be aware that everything on that site will ultimately be something that Facebook knows about. Google just doesn't seem very different by that standard.

I feel like they could care, but the network effects are so strong, and the negatives are hidden for now. This is because for the most part the people designing and implementing the tech are not classically or obviously "bad" people, nor are they designing it for those purposes. Plus its complicated, so many people defer to social proof, which is a stacked metric because the strong network effects are involved. I don't know that its a "care/not" care dynamic instead of a "what where the incentives acting on those who taught you" dynamic.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#37

Post by geofft »

throw2016 wrote: post #30

Discussions about ethical, privacy, surveillance issues often get hand waved and diluted here. See yesterday's thread on Google's retaliation as an example. We need a diversity of communities that can represent the the software industry in more dimensions than the VC funded side of things, growth hacking and the singular focus on success that are often in heavy conflict with any kind of value dimension and ultimately…

Right - it's probably very relevant to discussions of, say, Google's AI council that Google's purpose in putting Kay Coles James on their board was not that the Heritage Foundation's views per se should be represented (note that they didn't do corresponding representation of other political factions) but that she and the foundation have significant legitimacy and influence with the politically powerful parts of the American right wing, with which Google is generally in political trouble, and therefore it was a good way to allow Google to execute on its AI-related goals and therefore make money without political backlash.

A genuine ethics board would not include people whose real job is to curry favor with government - it's sufficiently close to unethical that it's a bad way to get started - and would be generally fine with saying "This task is ethically permissible, but not an ethical imperative, and so if it's politically difficult to do it, we should just do other things."

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#38

Post by Aunche »

nrb wrote: post #17
Aunche wrote: post #10

Tech needs fewer conscientious objectors, not more. These people rarely know anything about what they're protesting, and resort fearmongering and populism to get what they want without even attempting to resolve things civilly. The most recent example is Google's AI ethics council debacle. Activist employees were so stubborn that they can't won't even let people have a discussion about AI ethics because one of them h…

...and all it took was 200 years of rancor & malice and one of the bloodiest wars in the history of our country to begin to resolve. That’s a pretty extreme reduction of the founding of America with regard to those deep disagreements among the founding fathers. Those who “disagree with” the Heritage Foundation probably take offense by their propensity to outright lie and manipulate to achieve their objectives, most o…

My point about the Constitutional convention is that they were able to postpone resolving a contentious issue in order to make progress on things they can agree on. That's what it truly means to be progressive.

IMO, the activists outright lie to and manipulate the public to achieve their objectives by overly simplifying the positions of the Hertitage Foundation. Regardless, it doesn't really matter because the Heritage Foundation represents the beliefs of a large proportion of the population, so their voice is important.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#39

Post by beatpanda »

mfoy_ wrote: post #3

I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anyt…

I'm a software engineer largely because my father and grandfather were union laborers. My and my cousins' generation was the first in our family to be able to go to college. And it was precisely because the union was so easy to get in to that my father and grandfather were able to get good paying jobs with benefits without a college education. A low barrier to entry to a profession is no reason not to build a union.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwbzxemJZIc

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#40

Post by jammygit »

mfoy_ wrote: post #20
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Canada has had a professional, and pretty serious, association of engineers (in the traditional sense) for a long, long time. Maybe the software thing is a spin-off of that.

In Ontario, at least, "engineer" is a protected designation. http://www.peo.on.ca/

Alberta too.

The regulation is coming on very gradually since they're confused about how to define and regulate the title/practice.

The regulation won't necessarily help anything but to outlaw a lot of smart people from being able to write certain software. It will put us further behind the USA in our ability to create tech companies that matter (or that can compete with offshoring) and lead to higher unemployment as computers take away more jobs.

Luckily the restriction is barely enforced at this point, though it is getting stricter. I guess it will benefit me in the future when somebody will be forced to hire me because there weren't enough other applicants with professional membership... sort of a depressing thought

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