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Google Has a New Review Process For Handling Controversial Projects After Backlash Over Censored Search Product For China (businessinsider.com)
In the wake of reports that Google didn't follow normal procedure in the development of a censored search product for China -- with execs said to have circumvented standard company procedures and shut out important legal and security staffers from deliberations -- the search giant has announced a revamping of its internal review processes. From a report: This week, Google announced that it has established a formal process to review new AI-based initiatives that involve sensitive policy questions. The review structure was announced as a part of the company's six-month update to its AI Principles that CEO Sundar Pichai released in June. According to the report, one hundred reviews have been conducted so far, including a review of its facial recognition technologies for developers -- which the company decided to sideline.
"In a small number of product use-cases -- like a general-purpose facial recognition API -- we've decided to hold off on offering functionality before working through important technology and policy questions," Google wrote. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that Project Dragonfly was not one of 100 projects referenced in the report and did not face the scrutiny of the newly announced review process.
"In a small number of product use-cases -- like a general-purpose facial recognition API -- we've decided to hold off on offering functionality before working through important technology and policy questions," Google wrote. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that Project Dragonfly was not one of 100 projects referenced in the report and did not face the scrutiny of the newly announced review process.
Imagine your project made the front page of NYT. Is it good for the company? Y/N.
"In a small number of product use-cases -- like a general-purpose facial recognition API -- we've decided to hold off on offering functionality before working through important technology and policy questions,"
Translation :
We keep getting our dick caught in the spin cycle doing evil, so we're going to take an of-necessity step back and reevaluate just how evil the public notices we've become, for marketing purposes.
Except when they don't.
Just like every other Defense Contractor building the American Prison Complex.
Ethical development of computers as smart as people? Yeah, sure. Why not draft up some ethical guidelines for murder while you're at it?
What Google needs to do is hit someone that has a sense of ethics and a. moral code, and have them approve all other project concepts.
That's definitely not an internal hire though...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I submitted USA's own mass surveillance program 'Hemisphere' and that story NEVER got published. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
Does CIA/NSA has / . on its payroll?
get help
get raped in prison
This is just damage control for the media since they got "caught". Meaningless.
Seems like “don’t be evil” would have filtered that out.
L'Idiot
"Dog food" = eating what you make. So if they're working on a censored search engine, just force the people making it (and the managers pushing the project) to use it themselves all the time. If they like it, they will work to make it more effective at censoring (i.e. filtering). If they dislike it, they will work to make it less effective at censoring (i.e. include more relevant search results). And the end product you get is one that's better for the users regardless of what the project's stated goals were.
Have now realized they have bolshevism in their blood
Dragonfly has taught the people involved that liberal American developers can't be trusted. So next time they'll do it as a completely black project, entirely of-site - maybe even using devs from a third-world country, because the budget requirements would be so much lower - and launch it, and by the time the Western world sits up and takes notice, the project will be making Google so much money that there's zero chance of it being shut down.
If their old process led to the censorship project, why should we expect their new process to be any better?
They will probably just use vague feel-good words that make the process look good in theory and just abuse the ambiguities to do whatever they want in practice.
I wonder if the new process focuses on harsh penalties for whistle-blowers. Let's be honest, it wasn't the project itself that hurt Google, it was people finding out about it that did.
1. Skewing the Google search results in favor of larger, established websites over smaller ones.
2. Skewing the Google search results on political, social and economic issues in favor of "trusted sources" - i.e. US corporate media, and removing results of left-wing and right-wing critics of existing policy.
3. Sending a copy of all of your users' communications and tracked online behavior to the NSA, like Edward Snowden revealed.
Partisan Democrat cyberstalkers sure do love rape!!
Remember when Google used to be _good_ at searching the web? I do...
Yes. It seems like Google is stagnating in maintaining it's core competency - the search engine. There's an active arms race of people attempting to subvert the mechanisms of Google search for profit (seo.) This means that the lions share of developer brainpower is being spent at an escalating rate to simply maintain status quo, without expanding the part of its search capabilities. This makes Google vulnerable, I think. If they fail to defend against leveraged seo tactics, they lose the only thing that makes them money - credibility in advertising. If they hunker down and play out the arms race, they're going to lose - it's a form of information warfare with highly valuable (and legal) incentives to game their platform. Information warfare is played out in an asymmetric, nonlinear way, in which the effects of 10,000 separate individuals exhibit an exponential bias, whereas when 10000 people are congregated in governance, station, position in the hierarchy, and social identity, their cumulative effects mostly sum linearly.
Geniuses and outliers can turn such a battlefield on its head, but there are far more highly intelligent people not working for Google than smart people who do. In terms of equivalent iq and taking into account the entire global reach of Google, it's probably not unreasonable to think that they're outnumbered by a factor of between 10 and 50. That army of seo optimization experts, marketers, and web designers all represent a constant market pressure, and since Google isn't allowed to sacrifice short term gains for long term stability, they can't afford to spend what it would take to deliberately innovate past their state of the art search algorithm (thanks, US Corporate law.)
So yeah, they're vulnerable. Someone could come along and develop a truly useful, next level search solution that surpasses every known matrix of search as we know it, and Google would begin its long, slow decline.
Or it'd whip out a couple dozen IP lawyers, tangle the product up in court, settle through buying rights, or convincing a judge that they already held such a patent and incorporate it into the platform. They've got enough money that they can stifle any market, and they're the information gateway already.
Maybe it is time to break them up under anti-trust. And hell, while they're at it, whip up some sane legal protections for individual privacy and personal data. I'd also like a pony, a helicopter, and a shoebox full of fifties, as long as I'm dreaming.