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Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For? (nytimes.com)
Across the technology industry, rank-and-file employees are demanding greater insight into how their companies are deploying the technology that they built. An anonymous reader shares a report: At Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, as well as at tech start-ups, engineers and technologists are increasingly asking whether the products they are working on are being used for surveillance in places like China or for military projects in the United States or elsewhere. That's a change from the past, when Silicon Valley workers typically developed products with little questioning about the social costs. It is also a sign of how some tech companies, which grew by serving consumers and businesses, are expanding more into government work. And the shift coincides with concerns in Silicon Valley about the Trump administration's policies and the larger role of technology in government.
"You can think you're building technology for one purpose, and then you find out it's really twisted," said Laura Nolan, 38, a senior software engineer who resigned from Google in June over the company's involvement in Project Maven, an effort to build artificial intelligence for the Department of Defense that could be used to target drone strikes. All of this has led to growing tensions between tech employees and managers. In recent months, workers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon have signed petitions and protested to executives over how some of the technology they helped create is being used. At smaller companies, engineers have begun asking more questions about ethics.
"You can think you're building technology for one purpose, and then you find out it's really twisted," said Laura Nolan, 38, a senior software engineer who resigned from Google in June over the company's involvement in Project Maven, an effort to build artificial intelligence for the Department of Defense that could be used to target drone strikes. All of this has led to growing tensions between tech employees and managers. In recent months, workers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon have signed petitions and protested to executives over how some of the technology they helped create is being used. At smaller companies, engineers have begun asking more questions about ethics.
A bit late to the party, aren't we? I mean -- overall "Better late than never" still rings true, but it's hard to ignore the fact that tech titans have been doing things that are unethical in different ways for quite a while.
Amazon has been gobbling up larger chunks of the economy for a decade, and will likely face a breakup at some point.
Facebook ran unethical (no explicit consent) experiments in 2012 seeing who they could persuade to vote and who they couldn't.
Google had a "collect first, ask later" data policy, and their initial maps datasets were picked up by wardriving around the US storing everyone's open WiFi network data and taking photographs long before that was an accepted data-gathering norm.
Twitter kickbans whomever they like, which is fine, but makes a showing of it being an open discussion forum for international politics and routinely "just happens" to silence folks that don't match the political whims of the Bay.
Everyone else has been making Skinner boxes for a decade and a half, trying to find any way to keep folks more and more addicted to their specific forms of entertainment, in a way far more insidious than the tobacco industry ever did.
Apple... is doing basically okay.
I'm glad people are waking up to the power of the tech. It shouldn't have had to take Chinese dissident crackdowns to do it. And GPLv3+No-Military-Use-Because-I-Don't-Like-Your-View-On-SSM isn't the answer.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
TFA is just a series of anecdotes. The complainers are a small vocal minority, and it is far from clear that this is a real "trend" rather than just a media fad.
Ahh yes, the ol' "get a job you don't like" fallacy that assumes jobs are a dime a dozen and that it's your own personal failing if you can't get one. Fuck off.
Companies seem to be getting more and more advantages and power in society and law over individuals. So it is understandable that individuals will behave this way. From a purely libertarian standpoint it's ugly but if libertarians want their ethics to be respected, they should reign in the power of corporations a little. Otherwise no one's going to care.
Be good little Nazi soldiers and know you'll never face a tribunal for just following orders.
You're building it for that fat six-figure paycheck. There's your answer. Next!
It's OK to use facial recognition as a convenient way to unlock your phone, but not to track you when you walk down the street.
It's OK to use facial recognition as a way to find friends by the pictures they post, but not to track your known associates in defying the government.
The tech is the same, just who uses it. If you want to object to selling it to China, why didn't you object to doing it for InstaFaceTwits?
And the shift coincides with concerns in Silicon Valley about the Trump administration's policies and the larger role of technology in government.
While one would hope that they would be concerned no matter who's in office, it doesn't appear to be the case. It's just like the "Presidential Alert" that went out last week. Even though it was something started under the Obama administration, people were suing simply because it was Trump doing it. Would they be sharing their concerns if Hillary Clinton was president right now? People need to realize that it doesn't matter if it's your person or not who is in power, because eventually it's going to be someone who's not your person. Can you trust they aren't going to misuse your technology?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Be good little Nazi soldiers and know you'll never face a tribunal for just following orders.
I miss the days when invoking Godwin's law got you modded down rather than up. What the hell happened to Slashdot?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Most of what people do is useless. Myself I work in electronics hardware, I create next year's landfill.
Mostly random stuff.