Slashdot Mirror
Google Cancels AI Ethics Board In Response To Outcry (vox.com)
After facing criticism for including two controversial members in its AI ethics board, Google told Vox that it's pulling the plug on the board altogether. "The inclusion of drone company CEO Dyan Gibbens reopened old divisions in the company over the use of the company's AI for military applications," reports Vox. But it's Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James who proved most controversial due to her company's hard line stance on immigration and LGBTQ rights. Thousands of Google employees signed a petition earlier this week calling for her removal. From the report: The board survived for barely more than one week. Founded to guide "responsible development of AI" at Google, it would have had eight members and met four times over the course of 2019 to consider concerns about Google's AI program. Those concerns include how AI can enable authoritarian states, how AI algorithms produce disparate outcomes, whether to work on military applications of AI, and more. But it ran into problems from the start.
Board member Alessandro Acquisti resigned. Another member, Joanna Bryson, defending her decision not to resign, claimed of James, "Believe it or not, I know worse about one of the other people." Other board members found themselves swamped with demands that they justify their decision to remain on the board. The panel was supposed to add outside perspectives to ongoing AI ethics work by Google engineers, all of which will continue. Hopefully, the cancellation of the board doesn't represent a retreat from Google's AI ethics work, but a chance to consider how to more constructively engage outside stakeholders. Here is Google's statement on the matter: "It's become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can't function as we wanted. So we're ending the council and going back to the drawing board. We'll continue to be responsible in our work on the important issues that AI raises, and will find different ways of getting outside opinions on these topics."
Board member Alessandro Acquisti resigned. Another member, Joanna Bryson, defending her decision not to resign, claimed of James, "Believe it or not, I know worse about one of the other people." Other board members found themselves swamped with demands that they justify their decision to remain on the board. The panel was supposed to add outside perspectives to ongoing AI ethics work by Google engineers, all of which will continue. Hopefully, the cancellation of the board doesn't represent a retreat from Google's AI ethics work, but a chance to consider how to more constructively engage outside stakeholders. Here is Google's statement on the matter: "It's become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can't function as we wanted. So we're ending the council and going back to the drawing board. We'll continue to be responsible in our work on the important issues that AI raises, and will find different ways of getting outside opinions on these topics."
why Google, etc might want to relocate to China or other countries........
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Heritage does explicitly argue against equal rights. Not really sure someone who believes in lesser rights because of who you are is an opinion really worth listening to
The AI Board would be talking about a wide range of issues, of which LGBT rights would only be a small part (it might not even come up at all). I fully agree that not all opinions are equally valuable, but arguing against LGBT rights in no way invalidates the Heritage rep's opinion on all of those other matters. Maybe they do have an appalling view on other matters as well. In that case, why did the Google employees not say so? Then they'd actually have a point, instead of appearing to be a bunch of whiny virtue signalers.
I don't know if Google wanted to include Heritage Foundation because of their angle on matters related to AI or ethics. Maybe they just wanted to have a conservative representation on the board. You know, for reasons of inclusion...
Internal discussion boards at google are more toxic and aggressive than twitter hate mobs.
I am not surprised that HF are basically classified as Hitler.
You have no idea. Even upper management are scared at this point to confront these people.
You didn't actually refute the study. Do you have a citation handy? All you did was a very clumsy attempt at the "guilt by association" fallacy. And you began with an "ad hominem" fallacy. It's shameful this passes as argument and gets modded up. It's rank tribalism, "my side is right". Believe all women, except when they accuse Democrats.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I work in the industry AND have strong positive moral ethics. They didn't ask me to serve on the board. Not sure why they picked a bunch of CEOs ... that's a group of people that are more likely to be sociopaths than anybody!
'Unsuitable.'
We need to explore that point further.
I thought Ami was perfectly clear, in this context 'Unsuitable' means do not fully align with his SJW values and/or not sufficiently woke.