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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."
Yet another large group folds just because some tiny mob of people are angry.
People should really start taking up the examples of Virginian Democrats and stand fast - if Democrats can hold onto power after raping women and wearing a Klan hood, then it sure seems like Google should be able to have a panel with whoever the hell they like and ignore the haters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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
I find it interesting to have people from several groups like drones to the Heritage foundation on a board where the peons like me are not there in some form and capacity. its probably just some ones idea to get free travel and some political clout added to their resume. i know of VPs and higher that do this all the time without really adding value or developing and driving a group from a think tank into a draft, then a specification then a product or cool service based on what's Good for the Earth and People. oh well, maybe management from the bottom up is a better approach other than mob rule from the haters.
Seems the best approach is to add those 3 words back as the corporate mantra.
Language alone won't effect change, so the culture must also change. Yet many inside would like the mantra returned.
Making shrill demands to have everyone else follow your own narrow set of beliefs is not the same as ethics. Diversity of opinion is the very thing these employees are protesting against, even if they might not know it themselves.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
A shitfest of overblown egos and exaggerated IQ.
IQ's may not be exaggerated but competence almost certainly is. Keep in mind that people who have superior performance in one area may also be below average performers in other areas. This is more likely the case here. Superior skills in coding not translating over to organizational behavior and psychology.
Those familiar with organizational behavior and psychology would understand that a group of diverse perspectives would most likely make better decisions than a group with a monoculture perspective. IQs cannot overcome this phenomenon.
Engineers with ethics? Will the wonders never cease?
No, actually a lack of ethics. Ethical individuals listen to others with diverse or opposite opinions, hear them out, and honestly weigh both side's arguments. It is unethical individuals that presume others are wrong and bar them from participating in the discussion. They are practicing the ethics of fascists, quite ironic.
In any case the goog staff are wrong. You need a diversity of opinions, not a diversity of genders and skin tones. AI will happen, do they want to do it right or let someone else do it badly?
You are absolutely correct. Groups of people with different perspectives often make better decisions than groups of monoculture thought. However we live in an age where results do not matter, where signaling "good intentions" is more important. And again like the hyper partisan politicals they are only "their side" could possibly have "good intentions", thus their ideal of one party control is justified.
"You need a diversity of opinions, not a diversity of genders and skin tones." You need a diversity of both to achieve either.
A diversity of opinions is likely to give you a diversity of genders and skin tones and experiences.
And google's diversity of genders and skin tones is proving you don't necessarily get a diversity of opinions, we are seeing quite the ideological monoculture among Google's "diversity".
And some wonder why Google, etc might want to relocate to China or other countries...
Google hasn't even considered such a move because it would be downright idiotic for them.
Have you seen the clashes they having with the EU? Now imagine if the EU could tell them "tough shit" and they just had to comply. Not good for them.
Have you even read about the problems in China? It wouldn't be any good to move your business to China if the government will just steal your IP and give it to a "real" Chinese company.
If you think Google is thinking about moving then you are about as informed as a Fox News Channel viewer.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Setting diversity of opinion as the goal is the secret ethics sauce.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I don't think you've polled Google's employees with the granular depth required to say they all have a particular ideology other than by the fact that they work there, and on what they do. I've had jobs that were just jobs.
And you have never worked for google. I have for 5+ years.
2010 was free open and fun. Discussions across different ideas and ideologies. And everyone respected everyone else.
2018 at google is kind of twitter hate mob. You don't conform and "they" find out they will try to get you fired. Internal emails and lists to ban you from visit other offices to outright calls to fire you, or else.
It is completely insane.
Nah, this is the paradox of tolerance. In order to preserve freedom, we can't tolerate people who are intolerant of certain things.
If someone is working to take away your rights, you should not just accept that as "diversity of opinion", you should fight hard to protect yourself and those like you.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The Heritage Foundation: keeping the world safe for entitled white christian males since 1973.
Wikipedia: Heritage also became involved in the culture wars of the 1990s with the publication of "The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators" by William Bennett. The Index documented how crime, illegitimacy, divorce, teenage suicide, drug use and fourteen other social indicators had become measurably worse since the 1960s."
Was Mr. Bennett wrong? Were those social indicators worse in the 1990s than in the 1960s? If so - then why do the facts hurt you so?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Wouldn't you want differing views on an ethics board? I guess as long as they're not different from yours.
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!
if only they had assembled the board using some kind of unbiased, refined AI that would figure out the correct mix of different people everybody could agree on.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
We must stop letting the tribal factions in our country reject members of other tribes as unacceptable. An AI ethics board with full support from the left that can't convince the Heritage Foundation to come on board with its recommendation is no better than an AI ethics board from the religious right that hasn't considered non-Christian viewpoints.
An angry mob of several thousand people (at a company that employs about 100k) shut down AI Ethics meeting.
But let's pretend "it's because 'mob was right'", or in other words #nothinghappened shall we?
The petitioners wanted Google to create a "bubble" that only had a certain pre-ordained point of view.
Any smart AI would reply "A strange game, this social outrage thing. The only winning move is not to play."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In 1960s, an income of one worker could feed a family of 4, buy a house and a car.
In 1990s, an income of two workers cannot.
If you want to solve social problems, start with the erosion of the middle class and wage dumping. You'll notice that "socialist" Europe, where it still is true that one earner can feed a family, does not have those problems. Now what do you think might be the reason for this?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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!
Short sighted fools. That's what Google and those "thousands of employees" are. Looks like they want a politically pure board that, because it's based on politics, is utterly incapable of doing its job.
Politics over all, and in place of all. Great idea, worked awesome for the USSR.
Another instance of people totally unwilling to openly listen to other ideas. Political correctness is creating the most intolerant generation of people.
"Nah, this is the paradox of tolerance. "
It originates with philosopher Karl Popper, and by now is well debunked as a fallacy, because it is obviously broken logic.
"In order to preserve freedom"
Funny how SJWs as yourself and openly Communists such as this person always come up with big banner words (such as "In the name of humanity" which actually have nothing to do with the problem they are so eager to offer a totalitarian "solution".
we can't tolerate people who are intolerant of certain things.
Funny how totalitarian proponents such as yourself never clearly say their definition of "we" doesn't match the "we" any normal person would assume (but rather "only we, the SJWs / communists / Trotskyists / Maoists") and how they try to obfuscate the true meaning of "certain things" (which sounds benign until it is revealed it means "anything the SJWs / communists / Trotskyists / Maoists disagree with, including your right to private property, safety, pursuit of happiness, and even life").
Here is a proper rendering of the tolerance vs intolerance balance in a tolerant and open society: "our tolerance should not tolerate physical violence (including attempted/incitement to physical violence)".
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
The entire point of panels is to have people with diverging views talk about a subject in a civil manner.
By eliminating people from a panel they disagree with, those whiners are tacitly admitting they can't refute the views or ideas of the people they disagree with.
What you wind up is a panel full of agreement, which is worthless.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
"Nah, this is the paradox of tolerance. In order to preserve freedom, we can't tolerate people who are intolerant of certain things."
Exactly! We can't tolerate people who are intolerant of free speech.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
They absolutely did not refute those views. They shut down all discussions before views on AI ethics were ever discussed.
You don't even know what their views were, because they literally were not allowed to speak them. You might have found that the person you hate would have had the same views as you on the dangers or benefits of AI. We'll never know because your arbitrary purity test and extremism once again damaged civil society through censorship and deplatforming.
You are breathtakingly stupid, and still dishonest as always.
In 1960s, an income of one worker could feed a family of 4, buy a house and a car. In 1990s, an income of two workers cannot.
Yes, but if you were to compare the standard of living between the two, you'd probably find that a one income household could feed a family of 4 and buy a house and a car today at the same standard of living as a family in the 1960's. It's just that we expect so much more. The percentages of income that went to housing and food would probably be switched at 25% and 45% with clothes being 10% of the total income. The one thing that is different today, is that you would have a hard time finding a house as small as they would be buying in the 60's, which wouldn't be new and from previous decades and those two kids would be in the only other bedroom together till they left. Small house, one car, few appliances, no cable or internet, and the father gets bacon and eggs for breakfast and everybody else gets oatmeal because that's all the family could afford. Go back before the 60's and things just get worse. Start talking about what was called "middle class" lived in the great depression and it looks worse that how dystopian nightmares are in literature these days.
"Popper had a pretty good point"
Popper had a VERY WRONG point. He didn't distinguish between violence /calls for violence vs. free speech.
"WW2 was just ending in Europe, and the policy of appeasement was widely blamed for allowing Hitler to build up his military and start it."
Nowhere Popper refers to the appeasement, nor was the appeasement in any way related to Hitler's military build up (which he did anyway in secret, long before the appeasers), nor was Hitler the only problem (he was arguably the junior evil in comparison with Stalin / communism). But interesting how you mix facts with fiction.
"By being tolerant of Nazis a lot of people ended up dead"
There was LITERALLY nobody dead because of tolerating Nazis. There were LITERALLY millions of people killed for allowing / tolerating VIOLENCE & CALLS FOR VIOLENCE from all kind of totalitarians (Communists, Nazis, Fascists, etc.). You're again mixing facts with fiction just to promote a totalitarian call to violence against speech you disagree with. The whole point of free speech is not to protect speech we agree with, but to protect speech we disagree and even find repugnant.
"in the end we had to be intolerant of them in order to preserve freedom for everyone else"
No, that's the whole fallacy: nobody HAS TO be intolerant with free speech. As for violence and calls for violence, there are enough laws to deal with them. Stop hiding your totalitarian aims behind big banner words: you and your kin are never interested in freedom but in enslaving everyone you guys disagree with.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Your appeal to authority is cute, but the "paradox of intolerance" can stand or fall on its own. It's only the intolerant left who use it so that they can pretend to be "tolerant" and then switch to the infantile "but I don't have to be tolerant because you're hateful" bullshit when called on it.
Do you have ESP?