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> Facebook and the various other messaging platforms sole purpose is to make money. End of story. They have no values no morals or ethics. Explain why Google g

by madrox 8y ago

> Facebook and the various other messaging platforms sole purpose is to make money. End of story. They have no values no morals or ethics. Explain why Google got out of the military AI business, then. I would guess the response is "employee revolt is bad for business and would therefore lose money." This is the corporate version of saying "people are motivated by their self-interest." You're not wrong, per se, but you have to perform so much mental gymnastics to map behavior to this theory that it ceases to be useful at explaining behavior. The "companies exist to make money" trope always earns a hard eye roll from me.

castis 8y ago
>> Facebook and the various other messaging platforms > Explain why Google Google contains a messaging platform but is not a messaging platform in and of itself.
colpabar 8y ago
Google's main goal is to make money. Some of their employees didn't like this and make a fuss about it, then people noticed and felt the same way. Google noticed that people were upset with what they were doing, and they know that negative public perception can mean making less money, so they stopped. How is that mental gymnastics? And if Google doesn't exist to make money, why did they get into the military AI business in the first place?
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Maybe Google execs wanted to use their technology to defend the world against extremist terrorists?
moate 8y ago
>The "companies exist to make money" trope always earns a hard eye roll from me. Then...what...do they exist for? "We want to cure cancer, and in order to do that we need money to fund research, so we need to charge you money for the pills we make". So, you exist to make money. "We want to exert power and influence over the government, so we raise money from donors to buy that influence and lobby the government". So you exist to make money. Etc, etc. HOW you make money as a corporation doesn't change the fact that if you're a company, and not a non-profit or a charity (which are sometimes also just non-taxed companies) you're trying to make money. It's a huge part of the process, and the only thing you can uniformly say the company does. Now people, that's a different story. People are singular and have their own goals. They may not be there just to make money. A company is made of many people, sometimes with conflicting goals. So to say that the company is trying to do X, when 30% of its employees are actively trying to do Y seems rather disingenuous.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 8y ago
>Explain why Google got out of the military AI business, then. Well, explain why Amazon, and tons of other companies, stayed. For Google it's simple: they wait for the shitstorm to pass, and they'll try some other approaches to get to the same result (selling AI to the military).

by madrox 8y ago

castis 8y ago

>> Facebook and the various other messaging platforms > Explain why Google Google contains a messaging platform but is not a messaging platform in and of itself.

colpabar 8y ago

Google's main goal is to make money. Some of their employees didn't like this and make a fuss about it, then people noticed and felt the same way. Google noticed that people were upset with what they were doing, and they know that negative public perception can mean making less money, so they stopped. How is that mental gymnastics? And if Google doesn't exist to make money, why did they get into the military AI business in the first place?

fjsolwmv 8y ago
Maybe Google execs wanted to use their technology to defend the world against extremist terrorists?

moate 8y ago

>The "companies exist to make money" trope always earns a hard eye roll from me. Then...what...do they exist for? "We want to cure cancer, and in order to do that we need money to fund research, so we need to charge you money for the pills we make". So, you exist to make money. "We want to exert power and influence over the government, so we raise money from donors to buy that influence and lobby the government". So you exist to make money. Etc, etc. HOW you make money as a corporation doesn't change the fact that if you're a company, and not a non-profit or a charity (which are sometimes also just non-taxed companies) you're trying to make money. It's a huge part of the process, and the only thing you can uniformly say the company does. Now people, that's a different story. People are singular and have their own goals. They may not be there just to make money. A company is made of many people, sometimes with conflicting goals. So to say that the company is trying to do X, when 30% of its employees are actively trying to do Y seems rather disingenuous.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 8y ago

>Explain why Google got out of the military AI business, then. Well, explain why Amazon, and tons of other companies, stayed. For Google it's simple: they wait for the shitstorm to pass, and they'll try some other approaches to get to the same result (selling AI to the military).