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Tech Critics Create Powerful Video Responding To IBM's 'Dear Tech' Ad (slate.com)
"Technology hasn't fallen short of its promise. Tech companies have," argues Evan Selinger, a philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, reporting on a new "collaborative video response to IBM's Dear Tech Ad" (which was aired during last week's telecast of the Oscar's). Earlier Selinger wrote:
[IBM's] infantilizing ad depicts technology as if it were an autonomous person, a benevolent Santa Claus figure that can give great products to all the good little girls and boys if they ask politely.... It all sounds nice. But the message obscures the fact that technology hasn't fallen short of its promise. It's recalcitrant tech companies that need to change. That includes IBM....
IBM isn't alone in this sunny disingenuousness. Its competitors also give lip service to listening to our hopes and dreams while shutting down criticism that's voiced to make things better... A commercial like this one can't avoid being an empty marketing pitch when it represents a contested concept as a clear and unambiguous wish that technology can magically grant just as easily as Santa can satisfy a request for a new smartphone.
So a team of tech critics including Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab "created an alternative to IBM's ad. It's a provocative, line-by-line, video counterstatement" -- not "Dear Tech," but "Dear Tech Company."
Here are some of its more provocative quotes:
"We have a pretty complicated relationship."
"Your track record is mixed."
"Really mixed."
"And you have the potential to do immense harm."
"Are you only benefiting a few?"
"While many more suffer?"
The new counter-ad urges its viewers to demand more accountability from tech companies. (Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media at MIT, even argues for companies "that treat people as more than data subjects for surveillance capitalism.") In a follow-up article, Selinger writes:
The most dangerous message promoted by the Dear Tech commercial is that socially responsible technology will be on its way simply because people are asking for it. This way of characterizing change suggests tech companies aren't incentivized to promote outcomes that are more self-serving than giving the public what it deserves.
The new video says, "Let's make time to understand the impact of technology on people's lives." It's a powerful message. Too bad this ad doesn't have an Oscars-sized budget behind it.
IBM isn't alone in this sunny disingenuousness. Its competitors also give lip service to listening to our hopes and dreams while shutting down criticism that's voiced to make things better... A commercial like this one can't avoid being an empty marketing pitch when it represents a contested concept as a clear and unambiguous wish that technology can magically grant just as easily as Santa can satisfy a request for a new smartphone.
So a team of tech critics including Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab "created an alternative to IBM's ad. It's a provocative, line-by-line, video counterstatement" -- not "Dear Tech," but "Dear Tech Company."
Here are some of its more provocative quotes:
"We have a pretty complicated relationship."
"Your track record is mixed."
"Really mixed."
"And you have the potential to do immense harm."
"Are you only benefiting a few?"
"While many more suffer?"
The new counter-ad urges its viewers to demand more accountability from tech companies. (Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media at MIT, even argues for companies "that treat people as more than data subjects for surveillance capitalism.") In a follow-up article, Selinger writes:
The most dangerous message promoted by the Dear Tech commercial is that socially responsible technology will be on its way simply because people are asking for it. This way of characterizing change suggests tech companies aren't incentivized to promote outcomes that are more self-serving than giving the public what it deserves.
The new video says, "Let's make time to understand the impact of technology on people's lives." It's a powerful message. Too bad this ad doesn't have an Oscars-sized budget behind it.
So an ad that doesn't make sense is countered by an ad that makes even less sense.
Your final statement is the most poignant. Audience size is also what makes social media giants a great propaganda tool. The wisdom of the herd is still vulnerable to someone starting a stampede.
The previous century was about Thinking. This century is about Doing. Are we done yet? Have we been done yet? All I know that I haven't been done enough.
The greater good is never in the calculus when tech companies and their sales teams go on a push for new product sales. The simple fact that almost everything can become weaponized for instance, is completely foriegn to them, even as they themselves have participated in doing it.
As long as it helps the good guys and harms the bad guys, they think it justifiable to do. They don't get that they can be the bad guys to begin with. And it is shocking to see them willingly deny it could even be a remote possibility. Shocking because, for most of the real world, it's a degree of sheltered naivety most grow out of by age six. People can be bad and do bad things. Does your product/idea help them just as much as everyone else? ffs
Bernie Sandera 2020
IBM shouldn't lecture anyone
"that treat people as more than data subjects for surveillance capitalism."
Considering the source of the original advertisement, *that* quote didn't make the list?
A. Technology is the dominant force that 'impacts' society, and society has to respond to it. The printing press created a new type of society. In philosophy this is called the "technological determinist" perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
B. Social forces are the dominant force in society, and the technologies we invent and embrace (or reject) are an expression of these. For example, even though video calling was the more advanced technology, people preferred SMS instead. This is called the Social Constructivist perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
These are extremes on an axis.
In Silicon Valley technological determinism is rampant. It's the simpler of the two stories, the more attractive one. If technology is the dominant influencer, then there's no need to understand the complexities and ethics of the situations you're 'disrupting'. Narratives around blockchain/VR/singularity/etc also happily align with the "new tech is inevitable" part, because it implies any attempt to regulate it is wasted effort.
Millennials are often labelled "tech-savvy", which they aren't: they don't know how it works any more than the gen-Xers who were called the same just because we could set a VCR clock.
They're tech immersed, and their ignorance of how the tech companies exploit them means they're drowning in it, and no more than any previous generation know how to swim. They're dragging their elders down in it because they have no ability to warn against social media, home assistants, or smart TVs.
With all the surveillance you're capable of, can you work on either getting this stuff right, or staying away from it entirely?
According to the summary they telecasted something that belongs to Oscar, but they didn't say what it was.
Note that the actual article - probably because it was written by an actual journalist - got it right. MsManisH1B did the needful and "corrected" it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I saw it, and I don't think it says anything at all. Corporations should not be begged to behave, they should be forced to behave by law.
This is what a "free market" is - a market regulated so that all players have equal power. Economics 101, Adam Smith, etc.
Fails to actually edit. Again.
Dear pretentious internet children.......
Let's try to remember how much smaller the world felt 30 years ago.
Let's consider the always listening surveillance devices we put in our homes.
Let's point out the hundreds of options we have for things that did not even exists a decade ago.
Let's look real close at the way we behave behind the anonymity tech provides.
Let's try to count the hours lost to on-screen entertainment.
Let's consider the way we've all unthinkingly fell in line with social media's personal data appetite.
Let's remember that the reason our personal information is constantly lost is because we gave it away to begin with.
Let's try and remember..... anything without consulting the supercomputer in our pocket.
Dear pretentious internet children.... enjoy your free long distance, your standard in-car navigation, and your ultra efficient smart cars. Keep on buying anything you can imagine with standard two day shipping- without leaving your bedroom. Join an inviting community covering any subject that strikes your fancy, and keep using the ad-supported step-by-step video instructions on how to do anything you can think of. Go ahead and apply for hundreds of jobs in your area, even while sitting in your underwear at 2AM, after a rousing deathmatch with all of your closest *friends*
You're welcome to all of it (as long as your parents keep paying the power bill)
Your pal,
Tech.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
What IBM is trying to do is bullshitting people into thinking that tech is inherently good, and tech companies are good, too, and people just have to buy stuff from them and do good work for them and everything will be good in the end.
What the responding video suggests instead is that tech companies are a problem, that they're not always good, that it's not enough to trust them, that we need to ensure that tech companies really become good so that tech will turn out good for all of us.
What even the people behind the responding video don't see, perhaps don't even want to see, is that it's not some individual badness, some individual evil, that sometimes creeps into some of the tech companies, making them act against people's and mankind's interest some of the time. The makers of the responding video neither see nor acknowledge that it's not just a few bad people and a few bad companies, but profit as the core principle of the world's operating system, that necessarily drives companies and decision makers in companies to do what they do. The video makers completely fail to understand that humankind's progress or people's wellbeing are not the business objective of any tech company or of any company whatsoever.
Within the parameters of the world's operating system, for a company, the only business objective there is and ever was is profit, and that, by tendency, works against the interests of humankind and this planet. The intention behind IBM's video is to make them as a company look good, while they're actually complicit in destroying the planet and producing and conserving disparity in wellbeing both geographically and between classes. The responding video, on the other hand, tries to address tech companies instead of the way the world is geared, the way we as humankind allow economy to be run and organized, and by what control variables we allow it to be driven.
The libtards responded with a rant about how bad tech companies behave, alledgedly. Who btw keep making it possible for anyone to create and publish such a video at virtually zero cost. Did they thank them? Did they use a paid service that does not rely on ads? No, they act like little children wanting the cake and eating it too.
Correlation to IBM's ad, good use of my time? Nope. Zero. Nilch. Nada.
Besides the libtard's video is highly biased and full of anger -- against all tech companies and their employees. So it is the opposite of it's face value (tolerance and equality). No surprise there of course, typical fashist tactics.
At least the IBM ad is an honest piece of PR - it aspires to people to use tech to improve human lives and it alludes to the company's vast reservoir of talent, brand reach & tech to do so. It's a for -profit corp, FCOL, so good for them.
yeah i used to listen to sandera in high school
pretty good band
i was sad when dimebag died
This is just more leftist anti-white, anti-male rhetoric. They explicitly ask for jobs based on their skin color when they ask for solutions "led by people with lived experience of inequality" (because in modern leftism, it isn't the idea that matters, it is the skin color of the person hired to champion it).
Boring and racebait, 1/10.
The "Oscar's" what? Did you mean the " Oscars' " ?
I feel significantly more stupid for watching those two videos.
Talk about infantile!
'I know you are, but what am I?'
It's not tech that failed us, it's the milking of old tech to the last penny, before better tech is made reasonably available. We have so much tech around us, but it's not used even nearly to the fullest.
Let's remind the pale male boy's club that past and current actions exclude capable yet marginalized individuals from STEM
That was left out of TFS, probably to (temporarily) hide how fundamentally racist and sexist this "collaboration" is.
What are you talking about; did you not hear the dog whistles? If you respond to "pale man bad" with anything but an approving nod or raucous applause, then problem is clearly with you.
Is a distinction without a difference.
Iâ(TM)ll take IBM seriously when Weather Underground works quickly and reliably and maybe, just maybe, accurately. It has been nothing but a disaster under their ownership.
IBM's ad is just another attempt to shift blame away from companies and toward this evil thing called "tech". This have tried shifting the blame to engineers and scientists, but that didn't seem to work.
I have no idea what you are really trying to say. Something profitable by definition simply means that which benefits. The objective of any commercial business is to engage in commerce that is profitable. The profitable part is the only reason anyone would ever have for spending their time and talent on it.
This isn't about money, it's about return. If you're going to spend your time doing something, you want a good return on your efforts. If you need money to live on, and aren't independently wealty, then being commercially profitable is a requirement.
And what's the alternative? To do unprofitable work? That's no improvement. Love it or hate it, but the test of the profitability of a good or service is also an excellent proxy for its worthiness. Do you not think Slashdot a worthy place for you to spend your off hours? It's a good thing it's profitable for the owners of Slashdot, then.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Embarrassingly bad. Stick to what you do well, folks. And when you are trying to do something outside of your area of expertise, then hire experts to help you.
So what about sending them to prison? Most large one do deserve that...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
lol IBM pretending to be relevant to big 4 tech debate, you need to get the reports server online before US wakes rather than messing with these adverts guys, the client might send an angry mail to engagement manager!
The response from the identity police basically tried to seize the narrative and make it about them.
The original IBM ad was just an attempt to retake some ground from the surveillance capitalists. But it did focus on the right problems: Equal access, privacy, security, AI bias, and making environmental impact a core requirement for all future tech. These are all good things.
But they are a little impersonal... the story is still about the machines... how we make them and how we use them.
The identitarians don't like that because it's about everyone. They don't feel good unless the story is about them. For them only victims matter and they are the only victims.
But the story isn't just about you and it shouldn't be just about you. The current trends in social tech and unregulated capitalism are rapidly creating a world in which no person's information is safe, there is no privacy, there is no accountability.... now multiply that by 10,000 as more and more of the social surveillance is performed by backroom AIs. No one, not even their creators will be able to explain why you didn't get a job or why you didn't get a loan or pass a background check.
Simple fact. A loan or job or rental decision process (human or AI) should not have access to your gender. Or your race. Or in what zip code you were born. That's your information and you should have the right to withhold any data that is not germane to a service.
The IBM ad was an attempt to convince the world that at least one tech company (themselves) understands the problem and intends to deploy their tech in ways that don't cause harm.
It remains to be seen if they can keep that promise.
This song I'm gonna share with you It's called a letter to my penis y'all
Dear penis, I don't think I like you anymore
You used to watch me shave, now all you do is stare at the floor
Ohhhh dear penis, I don't like you anymore
Used to be you and me, a paper towel and a dirty magazine
That's all we needed to get by
Now It seems things have changed, I think that you're the one to blame
Dear penis I don't like you anymore
He sings, dear Rodney, I don't think I like you anymore
Cause when you get to drinkin', you put me places I've never been before
Dear Rodney, I don't like you anymore
Why cant we just get a grip on our man to hand relationship
Come to terms truly how we feel
If we put our heads together we could just stay home forever
Dear penis, I think I like you after all
Oh hey Rodney, while your shavin', shave my balls
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They allowed Google to do what they did, they allowed Facebook to do what they did, and I was like, "WHAT, REALLY?"
Now the bird has flown the coop.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What's a prison term for a corporation? How about fining them their *entire* profits for the previous period corresponding to the sentence. (You have to go into the past because if it's going forward they'll just cook the books.)
Tech companies do exactly what they think will benefit them, nothing more and nothing less. This is how all people behave, tech companies included.
They can't pay their investors with gratitude.
If you want their behavior to change, you are going to have to do something other than say "please." You have to make it worth their while. You can't escape this reality.
You can use legal regulation, you can vote with your wallet, and you can create competing businesses of your own.
If you want the world to change, to those three things. But don't go around asking "please," that's naive.
What's a prison term for a corporation?
Burn their charter, take no prisoners, put their assets into public domain.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In the 1940s IBM came up with a solution to Hitler's Dear Technology letter, "we need to identify, incarcerate and/or eliminate our undesirables". Then they automated the holocaust. Ah, technology, is there nothing it can't do?
A giant corporation earnestly trying to prove it has a conscience, and a (small) pack of condescending brats trying to impose their own wokeness on everyone else.
Can we let them collide into non-being?
This video was not moving. It was not powerful. If you think it was, you're part of the choir they were preaching to and not a part of the target audience it should've been aimed at: the people that don't care either way but need to be informed.
They used angry, language that just pisses people off that may not share their ivory tower views. When I heard "pale male" I was immediately put off and annoyed. I stopped listening to their message, and started looking for critiques. They need to make solid points without using inflammatory language like that.
The sound production quality was also way off. If you want to compete with a polished ad to satirize it, polish the sound at the same level of your target.
And you don't try to reach "the middle" by putting a gay man that is so gay that he's wearing heavy makeup, jingling with his earrings, with a fancy headcovering. His entire, "F U societal norms," outfit screamed, "I need my ass kicked."
Talk about tone deaf. They should've run this by average people and seen what they thought before trotting this out to the public.
I seriously think a Corporate Death Penalty is in order: destroy the charter, sell all assets, and turn the proceedings over to be used in government social programs. That does open up the possibility of a predatory government agency (or, more predatory as the case may be). But at least that will be one less problem.
Once a couple of corporations are ended (and the stockholders get nothing out of it), corporate behaviour will improve.
Capitalism makes
Socialism takes
WTF? Evan Selenger was Prof for depth of philosoph? RIT was IMO, the right blend of trade school with 5 year college. You know "learn to code." I'm a graduate of systems software CS college, and (besides the brutal winters) remember having to take a handful of these easy classes freshman year to meet state college requirements. Then the culling CS classes 2nd year where half of the class D, F, or W's.
But the liberal arts "college" knew their place as an effective community College inside of RIT for kids who couldn't cut ME, EE, or CS.
Please recent RIT grads, tell me RIT isn't getting "evergreened".
IBM, may I suggest that you start with one of the DB2 codebases? DB2 UDB for UNIX and Windows seems particularly appropriate for this exercise.
Such a move is unlikely to damage mainframe and AS/400 DB2 revenues.
Some social warriors complain that IBM didn't answer in 2-minute video all the important questions world is facing? What?
It seems to me that group of intellectuals is making cheap PR by picking up on nonsense. Those "revolutionaries" always try to fight and destruct... because they are incapable of building and solving problems. Give them a chance to find solutions and they come up with gulags and secret police. :-D
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
What I saw in the file was scientist and philosophers preaching to us what we need to do with our lives. Come worship before the alter of technology. Even AI is supposed to determine if we are being bias toward others. This is what comes from a nation that worships government and science instead of God. Scientist, politicians, and philosophers would tell me that I am wrong in rejecting homosexuals. The Bible tells me that it is sin and an abomination in God's sight. I think that you scientist, politicians, technologist, and philosophers know what you can do with you worldly ideas.
It naïvely asks for moral behavior from a system that is incapable of it.