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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The first link I followed from the rebuttal was to a book titled "Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code".
I'm not even sure I understand what that means, but I detect a distinct hint of woo-woo.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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
"Jim Code" - Betcha that it's a crappy takeoff on the term Jim Crow. Probably another one of those lefty rants about technology destroying our souls, this time by bringing back racism somehow.
You almost got that right. The previous century was about pretending to think, were you camouflage dangerous emotions like racism, sexism, greed, etc. as the result rational thought. The same is now applied to "doing".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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.)
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!”
This is what can happen when a friend's cry for help goes unanswered. Every year, thousands of developmentally challenged anonymous cowards post comments such as this one on our message boards. Each one of these a tiny plea for someone to drag them out of their vanishingly small world of Faux News and The Daily Stormer and into a world full of possibilities.
Please, when you see one of these, try and get them connected with someone who can help.
Together, we can help these people live full, happy, productive lives free of the need to dehumanize and mock others simply to defend their warped world view.
Please, won't you think of the cowards? They're counting on you because obviously they can't count on themselves.
This message brought to you by the StopTheShithead Foundation and your local freethinker. Remember, a waste is a terrible thing to mind.
Thank you.
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
Ah yes, the old "vote with yer wallet!" mantra. Seems to be working with Comcast, AT&T, et. cet. Yeah? They've collectively been in the fucking dustbin for satisfaction surveys almost my whole life.
And yet, there they are, benefiting from concepts apparently unknown to you. Ever hear of "regulatory capture"? How about "buying the laws you want"?
No?
Then do some research and stop spewing happy thought bullshit.
Regulation is sorely needed, ACTUAL regulation. Not this ball fondling lip service we have now.
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
Ah, of course.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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?
Any video that champions inclusivity for all while almost completely excluding half the human population (they had one man who they needed to spew the anti white man line) is a prime example of SJW crap not worth your time or consideration.
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.
Ah yes, the old "vote with yer wallet!" mantra. Seems to be working with Comcast, AT&T, et. cet. Yeah? They've collectively been in the fucking dustbin for satisfaction surveys almost my whole life.
I agree with the main point of your post, but people HAVE been voting with their wallet here. Americans in general are not willing to pay for support. We choose our internet based on price, and maybe speed/bandwidth/coverage. Most people aren't willing to pay an extra dollar a month for good service, so lousy service is what we get.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Garbage in, garbage out.
This! At the very least get someone who understands how exposure works.
I understood perfectly what both the videos were trying to say - bullshit in two slightly different flavours.
Makes me laugh to see a white man in a comfortable position complaining about white men in comfortable positions.
wow - some moderators seem to have lost their sense of humor.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
it made sense to me. i question the system that gives a 5 minute solution. and fear A.I. by the very folks that profit from it to be very revealing.
I prefer to just mod them DOWN.
There is more than enough help for them out there in the real world, or on the internet if that's their preference, for them to develop, mature and grow.
If they choose not to grow, that's their choice.
Go live in Europe you twat, see what TAXATION is really meant to do.
Hell, come to 'Straya, we are socialist, despite our "rah rah USA guvmint", that will be removed as soon as they call the long delayed election, once all the rats have deserted them.
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.
It naïvely asks for moral behavior from a system that is incapable of it.