Slashdot Mirror
Sundar Pichai of Google: 'Technology Doesn't Solve Humanity's Problems' (nytimes.com)
In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has addressed some of the recent tensions within the company and those that the entire industry appears to be grappling with. From the story: Question: An estimated 20,000 Googlers participated in a sexual harassment protest this month. What's your message to employees right now?
Pichai: People are walking out because they want us to improve and they want us to show we can do better. We're acknowledging and understanding we clearly got some things wrong. And we have been running the company very differently for a while now. But going through a process like that, you learn a lot. For example, we have established channels by which people can report issues. But those processes are much harder on the people going through it than we had realized.
Question: Do you worry that Silicon Valley is suffering from groupthink and losing its edge?
Pichai: There is nothing inherent that says Silicon Valley will always be the most innovative place in the world. There is no God-given right to be that way. But I feel confident that right now, as we speak, there are quietly people in the Valley working on some stuff which we will later look back on in 10 years and feel was very profound. We feel we're on the cusp of technologies, just like the internet before.
Question: Do you still feel like Silicon Valley has retained that idealism that struck you when you arrived here?
Pichai: There's still that optimism. But the optimism is tempered by a sense of deliberation. Things have changed quite a bit. You know, we deliberate about things a lot more, and we are more thoughtful about what we do. But there's a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn't solve humanity's problems. It was always naive to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity's problems. I think we're both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too. Further reading: After Paying Off Men Accused of Sexual Harassment, Google Says It Will Meet Many of the Protesters' Demands.
Pichai: People are walking out because they want us to improve and they want us to show we can do better. We're acknowledging and understanding we clearly got some things wrong. And we have been running the company very differently for a while now. But going through a process like that, you learn a lot. For example, we have established channels by which people can report issues. But those processes are much harder on the people going through it than we had realized.
Question: Do you worry that Silicon Valley is suffering from groupthink and losing its edge?
Pichai: There is nothing inherent that says Silicon Valley will always be the most innovative place in the world. There is no God-given right to be that way. But I feel confident that right now, as we speak, there are quietly people in the Valley working on some stuff which we will later look back on in 10 years and feel was very profound. We feel we're on the cusp of technologies, just like the internet before.
Question: Do you still feel like Silicon Valley has retained that idealism that struck you when you arrived here?
Pichai: There's still that optimism. But the optimism is tempered by a sense of deliberation. Things have changed quite a bit. You know, we deliberate about things a lot more, and we are more thoughtful about what we do. But there's a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn't solve humanity's problems. It was always naive to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity's problems. I think we're both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too. Further reading: After Paying Off Men Accused of Sexual Harassment, Google Says It Will Meet Many of the Protesters' Demands.
Technology doesn't guarantee a solution, and it does solve all problems, but I'm pretty sure it has solved some problems, i.e. we're not all starving due to advances in agricultural productivity made possible by... technology.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Just buy up thousands of sexbots that are more fun to harass than actual coworkers, and sprinkle them liberally around campus... problem solved! (As long as the sexbots are programmed not to sue.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Seriously? This guy runs Google?
How many people does he think could survive on Earth without technology?
Keeping literally billions of people from dying sure seems like "solving problems".
I think the whole point is that technology is not a panacea. It helps solve problems, but deep down a lot of problems like hunger or poverty have underlying causes beyond the remedy of technology. A lot of it is simply getting past the human element: greed, corruption, stubbornness, mistrust, etc. Then you have natural causes such as simple physics, ecology, geography, etc that technology can mitigate but not effectively or realistically fully overcome. A lot of people in Silicon Valley (and tech in general) have grand ideas about changing or saving the world, and those dreams just simply aren't realistic or feasible. Limited or localized change and improvement is certainly possible and is a laudable achievement, but expectations must be realistic. And in quite a few instances, but trying to solve problems you end up only creating more.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Is Jesus.
No, I'm sure quite a few companies in Silicon Valley have Jesus. He and his friends clean the floors or take care of the landscaping.
What he doesn't tell you is that, being obnoxious like Google (Don't Be Evil) actually makes humanity's problems worse. Thanks, Pichai.
"Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems. It was always naïve to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity’s problems. I think we’re both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too."
Of course a vague term like "humanity's problems" can't be solved by technology, because we don't know what you're trying to solve. I'm more concerned with resource allocation and the profit system interfering with the technology that could be built to solve any number of problems we face, rather than being worried about an over-reliance on technology.
he's only thinking about Information Tech. Most of society's problems are economic. Food, shelter, healthcare. Look at every major societal in human history it's always been traceable to money. WWI and II were land grabs by nations looking for more wealth. 9/11 was due to US meddling in the middle east to secure cheap oil. The only other problem to solve is disease, and we're doing pretty good there. No more small pox. We kept bird flu in check.
Bio tech changes everything. People don't realize how much we've changed farming in the last 100 years. We use oil byproducts to recondition land so that we need fewer or no crop rotation cycles. We used genetic modification to massively increase yields and make pest resistant crops. We can feed everyone on the plant now.
Yeah, tech moved faster than our society at fixing problems, but our society wouldn't even get a chance to fix them without tech.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...on twitter I saw some post about how those retailer not getting involved with AI will be their demise. Reminded me that the tech industry, as Bill Gates indirectly said in saying its not like other markets. Obviously it is an entrapment market. Many of the readers here are familiar with the upgrade trap of wanting to upgrade one thing only to find they have to upgrade other things to do so. And sometime my system response experience is worse than what I recall of a Commodore 64, so where did all the upgrades in power and resources go? A: into tech industry pockets of course.
So the solution being sought is that of how to extract more money out of the users.... where what is really being proposed is programmers are gods, bow to the gods and their creations, otherwise you will die. If you buy our software you will be able to out compete your competition, until we sell it to everyone and then you can buy our upgraded software and out compete the competition, rinse and repeat. Today its a AI will solve your need to wipe your A$$
The basic sales pitch is always the same. Does it really deliver. Buy our Robots to do the work and save tons of money from not hiring people and all the overhead of so doing? Wonderful..... until there is no-one left to buy your product cause they have no income..
The tech Industry is a very self serving industry and has a long running ethics violation it supports for this. Don't let the users do for themselves what they should be able to do, make them tell us what they want so we can determine if there are enough wanting such to warrant us doing it and selling it back to them.
Where is the third standard primary, easy to use, user interface of the side door (IPC) port to applications, libraries and device that allow the users to automate, even across applications, libraries & devices for themselves functionality the programmers provide the users to do manually via GUI and command line type interfaces?
This third primary standard user interface doesn't exist. If you want to become wealthy make people need you ~ Bill Gates.
Did you hear about the AI/Robot who was given Citizenship? Sophia. When we are not even near AGI.
- Grievance-obsession is not idealism.
- Making up stories about bad things that might happen is not idealism.
- Beefing about people or condescending to people or looking down on people in other states who aren't like you is not idealism.
- Bigotry against religion is not idealism.
- Name-calling is not idealism.
- Self-obsession is not idealism.
- Wanting to spend money other people earned is not idealism.
- Choosing to side with one group over another group is not idealism.
- Rejection of science in favor of storytelling about diversity is not idealism.
Idealism rejects all of these things. Idealism tells the truth and treats everyone with goodwill. You guys at Google should try it.
Starvation, lack of a home, those are real problems. Even then humanity goes on, until it doesn't.
But there's a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn't solve humanity's problems. It was always naive to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity's problems. I think we're both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too.
It won't solve all our problems. But we've made the blind see, the lame walk, fed the world, cured a lot of cancer, fought off a lot of diseases, empowered billions, and unless we have some sort of additional advances things look pretty damn grim when it comes to global warming.
You are working on self-driving cars. "1.3 million people die in road crashes each year. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled". This is a problem. You are working on solving it. That justifies the investment, all the work, and your fucking stock price.
You want non-discriminatory hiring practices that truly adhere to being an equal opportunity employer? Automate it. Remove discriminatory factors and strive for a meritocracy that's blind to race, religion, or creed. If the process for raising complaints is painful, fix it. Streamlining and automating HR sounds like something you could sell.
You are a technology company. Act like it.
Technology doesn't solve ALL of humanity's problems. Yet.
Our technology has evolved many orders of magnitude faster than our species evolves, especially the hardwiring in our brains. In many ways we'd benefit from slowing down our technological progress (and even backing it up) until the human species can catch up to it. Unfortunately nature may do that for us and in the harshest way possible.
So on the one hand you are right - hunger and poverty have human causes. But, technology could conceivably fix them. For example some hunger is basically because certain dictators / warlords / etc. take the food and also steal the relief shipments other groups send in. A drone that killed off that person would likely solve that. Of course you would eventually get Skynet. But for a short time it would be solved.
That's not solving the problem. As recent events in ME/NA show, forcibly removing a strong-arm ruler often just causes more problems as the state descends into chaos and anarchy at worst, civil war at best. So instead of a state (relatively) peacefully starving, you have a state starving and at war with itself.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So on the one hand you are right - hunger and poverty have human causes.
Hunger and poverty are the natural state of life. They aren't caused by humanity, they are solved by humanity — except during disasters or when someone gets in the way.
Technology doesn't solve humanity's problems
It does, technology has solved many of the world's biggest problems. However, once it solves a problem then there is no longer a problem, so it doesn't appear that technology has done anything.
But take mass transportation as an example. The inability to move millions of people and millions of tons of goods never seemed like a problem before it was possible. Nobody ever thought "Hmmmm, I wish there was a way to get 50 million people a year to visit other countries" or "I wonder how we could possibly move a quarter of a million tons of crude oil across the world?" . Not until the means to do so was delivered. Then after that, the problem disappeared.
So it is a rather dumb statement. Just like we don't have a "problem" now on how to get 10,000 people a year to The Moon and back. It will become possible - and then easy - to do. And once it does, that will be because technology enabled the solution. But right now, no-one considers our inability to do that to be a "problem".
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Once you have let that Genie out of the bottle, the is no turning back.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
The articles related to this protest walkout all say "accused" i would hope that a mere accusation is not enough to make action against a person that could cause them to loose there livelihood and cause the cascade that comes with it loss of home starvation etc. We had this thing for ages and it mostly worked called the presumption of innocence until the accusation can be proven. Did I miss a memo someplace that stated we now run on guilty until proven innocent? because that is some hard core spooky Totalitarian type stuff why don't we just bring back stretching on the rack while were at it.
Whenever I see the name Sundar Pichai, my mind changes it to Tsundere Pikachu.
You seem to be purposely misunderstanding my question. Here it is again:
Can you give an example of something you wish to say but are being "censored or blocked" from saying?
Are you saying that you wish to say, "the holocaust never happened" but are being "censored and blocked" from saying it?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes you are put in jail. That is censoring.