Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#381

Post by throwaway201606 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 8:51 PM UTC

aabhay wrote: post #270

throwaway201606 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had more upvotes to give for this comment. It gave me multiple upsights about how to clean up my approach thinking about the issues here: + framing an analogy using technology governance functions - whose functions and values can be clearly quantified and measured by many independently - with a ethical (moral) functions - whose values and results are much more nebulous + drawing a parallel between hackers -…

> Ethics is now inside the corp. fence so it has to be heard. Do you believe this is a viable trend? This debacle seems to point to the death of 'Ethics research' inside of corporations. What do companies stand to gain from hiring ethics researchers who are a liability to the shareholders? My guess is that the model will go back to using CSR budget to invest in 'social good' non-profits and think tanks that stay at a…

> What do companies stand to gain from hiring ethics researchers who are a liability to the shareholders?

Trying to tackle both questions at once: this is a viable trend and companies do stand to gain.

If the market is saying that you have to consider other motivations and goals aside from profits and growth, and you have built this machine that is super-efficient and effective at delivering on growth and profits irrespective of all else, you need outside skills to change.

To give a specific example, take the Norway Sovereign Fund which is one of the biggest investors in the world: it has indicated that it is incorporating environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues into their decision-making,

So, if you want to get their investment, you have to have these goals in the your corp. leadership and performance management mandate.

To enable this, you need folks with these skills, who currently are not management, in the fold ( meaning folks like social scientists, ethicists etc. having really significant corp leadership roles and authority ).

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by p1esk » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

m463 wrote: post #56

shoo wrote: post #30

One thing I've wondered: what is the purpose of Google's ethical AI group? What utility does it provide to the corporation? I suspect the primary motivation for funding ethical AI work is _public relations_ (or less kindly, corporate propaganda) - to help mitigate damage to Google's brands and reputation by public concern surrounding artificial intelligence. It is well understood that it can be difficult to get someo…

There's one other use for it - and maybe this qualifies as PR - hiring. Super-intelligent folks are the target of google's hiring. I suspect these types of people can work anywhere, they get to pick and choose. If they can pick and choose, they will have other motivations, like being able to make a difference, and not blindly create a dystopia for everyone on the planet. So... having an Ethical AI group lets people j…

What makes you think those "super-intelligent" people would all agree what "do things right" means? What makes you think they would side with the Ethical AI group at Google? As an example, John von Neumann was as "super-intelligent" as they come, and yet he made it very clear he wanted to nuke Soviet Union.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

bisectable wrote: post #313

DoreenMichele wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without actually knowing the history, I think it's probably stupidly conceived. We seem to generally imagine that the biggest problem or challenge with AI is ethics because we frame ethics as being largely rooted in something emotional, like empathy or compassion, and not logic. The movie I, Robot explores what happens when "logic" is taken to its logical outcome by an AI. It posits a robot with feelings as the antid…

Almost there. Each individual comes with a distinct set of biases. Social collective action is the contextual weighted average of those individual biases. This results in quite resilient societies: at equilibrium individual biases balance each other across the population, small changes in a relatively small number of individual preferences result in societal course corrections, avoiding dangerous shocks. Smooth ride.…

[deleted]

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by pron » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

coward8675309 wrote: post #375

pron wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the employer replying "sorry to hear that buh bye." ... and then other employees raising a stink, perhaps in the hope, misguided or not, that the company will reverse its decision or change its behaviour to help its PR. The employer can use whatever power they think they have, but so can the employees. It's one thing to say that what the employees did wasn't a wise way to achieve their goal, but it's a whole ot…

You're bringing issues of morality into this when it seems to me that the employees are more focused on self-interest and the accumulation and exercise of raw power while Google is preoccupied with public relations.

Both sides use their power to further their goals. To what extent each side's goals align with those of society at large is a separate question, but I find it perplexing that some here think that it's fine for a particularly politically active company to use its power to its advantage as long as it operates within the law, yet when employees do the same, only on a much smaller scale, that's considered as crossing a line.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by loopercal » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

coward8675309 wrote: post #298

pron wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that the company's values or behaviour have changed, but, more importantly, the decision to work at a company is mutual: both sides want it (the company expects the value an employee will bring exceeds the cost of their employment; hiring someone is not a charity), and they enter into this relationship when neither side knows everything about the other, certainly not how they would behave in the future.…

I don't disagree with you. I was at an adtech startup, and I had bright lines — no payday loans or for-profit education. Luckily we never needed to blur or cross those lines, but as our business evolved, the way I delivered my — and my colleagues delivered their— preferences was not through laying down ultimatums but by having conversations. Some people seem intent on creating drama and casting things not as their pr…

"I re-watched Schindler's List..."

According to the movie the shells were all non-functional, so I'm not really sure why you brought that up.

"the way I delivered my — and my colleagues delivered their— preferences was not through laying down ultimatums but by having conversations..."

As a laborer, the greatest value you bring to the company is your labor. That's the only real thing that gives you leverage to negotiate the terms of your employment. At least, that's what I do when I'm looking for a new job, I'm not sure if you're just morally opposed to negotiating or something. It sounds like what happened here is this person spent a lot of time having these DEI discussions in which they did not feel heard, and that combined with an (allegedly) unprecedented change in the publication review process led to them concluding that these discussions weren't actually doing anything, so they tried to use their full leverage: the withdrawal of their labor.

It's neat that your discussions were always fruitful and you felt heard, but that isn't always the case.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by tiahura » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

cbozeman wrote: post #204

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We praise whistleblowers left and right on HN, at the expense of objectivity (assange, snowden, et al), despite ethical issues with them. Yet when a woman of color does it, "oh they are their own company and can do what they want and it's her fault for trying to be ethical in this space in industry." What?? Had a white male done this, it's hard not to think he'd be praised as a hero on here.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an ethical issue with how Edward Snowden handled the revelation of mass illegal spying on the American people. And I don't think anyone's disputing her desire to promote and encourage ethical implementations of AI technology. The crux of this issue is how you handle yourself, and it seems the more I read about how she handled these things, the more it seems like how children act. "If I d…

> You'd be hard-pressed to find an ethical issue with how Edward Snowden handled the revelation of mass illegal spying on the American people.

Did he contact any of the number of Congressmen or Senators who are sympathetic to his concerns to see what could be done before committing treason?

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by pron » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

googlethrow3134 wrote: post #218

js8 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand that some may be upset about things their employer does and that's well within their rights. It is within their rights, true. But it's not just a question of law, but also ethics. We accept that, in democratic societies, we can freely criticize our government and still stay the citizens. There are good principal and practical reasons to have it so. However, in private companies, for some reason, we don…

I don’t want to work activists, neither do the majority of my colleagues at Google that I speak with. If you want to be an activist, go join a non-profit.

That's a strange position at a company whose board and top executives are huge political activists spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbying. Political activism is a big part of what Google does, and at a scale that exceeds many if not most non-profits.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by shadowfox » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #322

shadowfox wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess the 'bias and inequality in AI' is less striking a cord for the HN crowd than 'fair business practices' That is interesting. I wonder if it indicates something about the demographics of HN.

Yep, we’re all rich racist WASPs, you got us. More seriously, it probably does indicate something about the political sentiment of users of HN who comment, which may indirectly indicate something about demographics. A direct link is tenuous.

> Yep, we’re all rich racist WASPs.

Hmm. That was a strange, but interesting jump indeed.

> A direct link is tenuous

That could be.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by throwaway316943 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #363

throwaway316943 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corporation is not obligated to keep you employed nor should they be outside of a legal contract. I’d prefer it stays that way because I don’t want to be compelled to work for anyone or have them be compelled to hire me. They’re two sides of the same coin.

They are two sides of the same coin, but the law in some countries recognises that the employer has more power, and so favours the worker and makes it harder for the employer to terminate an employee without making it harder for the employee to quit.

Making it harder to fire someone makes it harder to hire them in the first place. This hurts everyone because it reduces the number of available positions by increasing the cost of hiring. Give too much power to the employees and you wind up with corrupt unions that effectively have a cartel over entire areas of the economy. It’s just layers of red tape and misery for everyone. Getting fired isn’ta problem if you can easily get a new job. It becomes a problem when nobody wants to hire because they can never get rid of you or they have to deal with a crooked union. Having high barriers to firing people also makes the fact that you got fired a giant stain on your resume instead of a fairly normal occurrence that could be due to a no fault reason.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Post by twcz » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #366

g42gregory wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I understand his point is that he is comparing the woke culture to the virus, not the workers themselves. I am guessing that there are plenty of Google’s employees who are not a part of the woke movement. He would not be addressing them in his point, I think.

I would expect a company as large as Google to have many employees with varied opinions, and given that leftist and social justice leanings are prevalent among the well-educated, I would expect such views to be overrepresented at Google and so that the contribution to Google's wealth comes in large part from people that commenter sees as a virus. In fact, since Google hired the manager in question, they must have don…

> they sought to exploit it in some profitable way

Agreed, Google did. And now the chickens are coming home to roost – hence my initial post.

And on your equating of "well-educated" with "woke"… What a disgusting thing to say. Your demonstration of such non sequiturs and reading miscomprehension, combined with the downvotes and post flagging, makes much better sense now.