8 ms·

Not buying their moral arguments at all, given that they are about to enter the Chinese market again, after backing out of it, supposedly because of moral conce

Not buying their moral arguments at all, given that they are about to enter the Chinese market again, after backing out of it, supposedly because of moral concerns. A while back an article surfaced here [0] about how the JEDI competition is basically tailored to AWS, and how Amazon had lobbyists stipulate the exact conditions. [0]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/has-bezos-become-more-powerful-in-dc-than-trump https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/has-bezos-become-mor...

illumin8 8y ago
Pretty telling how the money quote in the article is "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.” In other words, they couldn't meet the requirements for the RFP, so they decided it was advantageous to score some morality points by dropping out...
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Bear in mind, the "morality points" aren't on Google: They're on Google's employees. The commitment Google made for AI Principles only exists because their employees demanded it, and forced Google to end it's participation in the Pentagon's drone warfare project. Google's management are more than happy to help the government engage in illegal assassination abroad via drone, but it's employees are not. For Google's executives, this is less to gain morality points with the public, but to retain employees who would leave otherwise. Though another aspect is, they may have already gotten an indication from the DoD that dropping out of Maven would be held against them when evaluating the proposals. RFPs aren't just about the dollar value, and they'd certainly take into account the possibility of Googlers refusing to do the work needed to fulfill the contract.
  - reacweb 8y ago
    I think you are right. The direction of Google are selling their soul to government in order to protect and develop the company. But a majority of the employees are still dedicated to their old motto: "Don't be evil".
  - dctoedt 8y ago
    Google's high-minded employees should think about what might have happened if Nazi Germany had developed a uranium bomb first.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure that for $10 billion, they could have gotten whatever certifications they needed by plowing resources into it. Elon Musk went through the same to get government contracts that certification requirements tailor made for Boeing/Lockheed. Corporations are not people. Judge them by their actions, in the end, what matters is what happened, not intent. Almost every public institution's actions are always ascribed by some as driven by money or power, or others by high minded values. The employees at a company can have high minded values. Even the company culture can have high minded values. But in the end, financial decisions made by companies are amoral, and what matters is, what the decisions actually were, not whether the executives were pressured into it, because ultimately, there is pressure on all sides from all stakeholders. Giving up on $10 billion, no matter how you slice it, is a huge hit. They could have fought for it, but decided not to, based on whatever pressures they were reacting too. That's a win.
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    >"Corporations are not people. Judge them by their actions, in the end, what matters is what happened, not intent." Oh nonsense, corporations are run by people. People who make deliberate decisions on behalf of the company. And implicit trust is bestowed upon these stewards of the company by the company's employees. I think theres a tacit understanding that these people will balance both shareholder value and ethical concerns. A such intent very much matters.
    - cromwellian 8y ago
      Intent is imputed, you can't know it for certain, or even very well. As an outside observer, employee, or shareholder, you can assign intent all you want, but at the end of the day, the only real evidence you have is action. Look, I'm a Google employee, I really like Sundar, he comes off as a pretty authentic, caring person. But what he says in "official statements", even internal communications, like every company, is very much authored by committee, by corporate messaging, by legal, it is not his voice alone. So if Sundar says he's doing something because it's morally right, should I believe that's the reason, because in less 'official' statements, in his own words, he comes off as a genuine person? Or, should I disbelieve it, because in more official communications, it comes off as overly parsed and triangulated? You face the same issue with politicians. Politicians say they truly believe one thing, they announce their intent, and then when they get into office, you find their voting records quite a bit different than what you believed them to be for. I think you should judge these politicians by their actions, not their campaign speeches, not their heartfelt fireside chats, but what -- when the rubber meets the road -- they vote for. The votes don't lie, protestations of piety can.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Amazon has a big head start, so Google might be trying to save face by declaring themselves out of the contest.
azurezyq 8y ago
Let's talk about this item only. I don't think that's all ethics related stuffs. The Pentagon's something different for me. I'm a Chinese and I definitely know that the Pentagon WILL use technology to fight against us. Should I write code for them? Or I should trust them not abusing? If your country is on the other side of NATO, what do you think?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- claydavisss 8y ago
  If you've willingly chosen to reside in the US then your tax dollars are supporting this work regardless of who fulfills the contract.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    Though extremely difficult, it's possible to exist in the USA without paying any tax to any entity. You would have to be unemployed, receive food and water through non-sales-tax-included methods (like living in New Hampshire or going to a local soup kitchen or boiling grass), and never own a home or rent even. Well come to think of it, you could probably eat sleep and drink at a casino all day, if it's on native land.
    - kbar13 8y ago
      yeah but you're still paying for a service from a provider which pays tax to the government
      - anoncoward111 8y ago
        No, I literally described situations where nobody is paying taxes. Most shops in NH and non-profits don't make enough revenue to pay taxes on it. And native american land by it's definition is not taxed.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
philwelch 8y ago
> Not buying their moral arguments at all, given that they are about to enter the Chinese market again Their "moral" concerns are driven by the noisy section of their workforce that reflexively opposes the US military. These people aren't outspoken about the behavior of the Chinese government, in fact they probably don't think about it much.
- mattnewton 8y ago
  I should probably keep my mouth shut, but as a Google employee I can assure you I am concerned about both and I am not alone. My views are my own, etc
  - jtl999 8y ago
    Thanks for what you do.
    - Strongerpass 8y ago
      What did he do?
- jpatokal 8y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe...
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  That is completely untrue. Googlers seem to be just as upset over the China project as they were over the Pentagon thing. * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe... * https://www.foxnews.com/tech/google-employees-quit-over-controversial-china-search-engine-project-report-says https://www.foxnews.com/tech/google-employees-quit-over-cont... I don't know who told you that, but you shouldn't trust them.
  - 8y ago
dkhenry 8y ago
I think its less of tailoring for AWS and more that AWS is worlds ahead of Google and Microsoft in their commercial offerings, and especially their government offerings. For instance Google Cloud does not have a High certification from FedRAMP which would rule it out being used for any workload that involved weapons systems which generally are FISMA High. I think what was dome was less writing it for AWS and more just writing it to have the requirements you would want out of any public cloud offering. The problem is most companies have been providing a "good enough for government work" solution and now they can't fulfill the RFP. ( Amazon is in this boat too, there are tons of services that haven't been cleared yet, and GovCloud is expensive and only exists in one region, in that respect Microsoft has been ahead, but they have their own problems)
- Strongerpass 8y ago
  How is AWS worlds ahead Microsoft in their commercial cloud offerings? I work with both and to me they seem very similar.
  - dkhenry 8y ago
    At the most basic level performance is way below what I have seen with AWS. It was taking about 20 times longer to load data into a database cluster in Azure then into AWS. Additionally Azure is _just_ getting Availability zones online. Previously if you wanted high availability you needed to use multiple regions. I have yet to be able to create a kubernetes cluster using the UI, and I am not even sure how Users work since they have this odd hybrid Active Directory setup that may or may not be users. On the flip side It was painless to use both GCP and AWS and even second tier cloud providers like Digital Ocean or Packet.net are simpler to use then Azure. My standing advice for anyone is only use Azure if you are 100% in the Microsoft ecosystem using .NET and Visual Studio to develop your applications, and you plan on using their professional services to help you out when you hit problems
    - ct520 8y ago
      I use digital ocean, aws , heroku, azure almost weekly. For ... I can’t remember. Years. I think your opinion is bias and I don’t share the same sentitiment. But like you it’s just my opinion. Cloud providers bounce back and forth on features. Not everyone is right at that given point for the client. But I have seen the converge over the years, with each service having plus and minuses.
p0rkbelly 8y ago
Moral concerns can go both ways as well. We don't know what the Pentagon will use the raw compute/storage resources for. I'm sure they are not telling MS/AWS/GOOG either. I do know that the US Military invests heavily to make weapons better at killing, but also better at killing the right targets. Let's assume the due to US politics war is unavoidable. But, because of investments in technology (smarter drones, AI, guidance systems) in systems powered by the JEDI project we are now able to reduce civilian casualties by 90% in a military conflict. Hell even 10% is a huge win. Is this now a morally just cause?
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  When your assumption is also your conclusion, you have what's called a "circular argument". It's obviously true, but says nothing about anything outside itself.
  - p0rkbelly 8y ago
    Maybe I was being too Socratic? But, philosophy/logic was never my strong suit. Perhaps that's why I'm an engineer flirting with mediocrity...
matt4077 8y ago
There might actually be a continuous spectrum of both morality and profitability of different actions... Google doesn't care about any possible humility of not getting a DOJ contract. Because nobody would notice, and those who do are more likely to see it as a positive, considering the DOJ's reputation in procurement. It also doesn't cost anything relevant to stay in. And even if the probability may be small small, the magnitude is enormous. Leaving us with no clear motive BUT something that may have to do with morality. Of course this may be motivated by worries about their reputation among current and potential employees, but then we're getting into the whole "what's true altruism" debate which is rarely as productive as even fake altruism.
StreamBright 8y ago
I am not buying it either. Corporations do not have moral. The board might have some political considerations but we know that entering the Chinese market mean that Google had to accept things that are amoral.
tinkerteller 8y ago
The problem with China is that government isn’t magically going to remove sensorship and Google had zero impact on their policy by staying out. It seems right move to me that Google will provide slightly more open search and other apps and may be able to instigate bit more openness. So going in seems like right strategy then staying out even if there was no money involved.

illumin8 8y ago

Pretty telling how the money quote in the article is "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.” In other words, they couldn't meet the requirements for the RFP, so they decided it was advantageous to score some morality points by dropping out...

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Bear in mind, the "morality points" aren't on Google: They're on Google's employees. The commitment Google made for AI Principles only exists because their employees demanded it, and forced Google to end it's participation in the Pentagon's drone warfare project. Google's management are more than happy to help the government engage in illegal assassination abroad via drone, but it's employees are not. For Google's executives, this is less to gain morality points with the public, but to retain employees who would leave otherwise. Though another aspect is, they may have already gotten an indication from the DoD that dropping out of Maven would be held against them when evaluating the proposals. RFPs aren't just about the dollar value, and they'd certainly take into account the possibility of Googlers refusing to do the work needed to fulfill the contract.
- reacweb 8y ago
  I think you are right. The direction of Google are selling their soul to government in order to protect and develop the company. But a majority of the employees are still dedicated to their old motto: "Don't be evil".
- dctoedt 8y ago
  Google's high-minded employees should think about what might have happened if Nazi Germany had developed a uranium bomb first.
cromwellian 8y ago
I'm pretty sure that for $10 billion, they could have gotten whatever certifications they needed by plowing resources into it. Elon Musk went through the same to get government contracts that certification requirements tailor made for Boeing/Lockheed. Corporations are not people. Judge them by their actions, in the end, what matters is what happened, not intent. Almost every public institution's actions are always ascribed by some as driven by money or power, or others by high minded values. The employees at a company can have high minded values. Even the company culture can have high minded values. But in the end, financial decisions made by companies are amoral, and what matters is, what the decisions actually were, not whether the executives were pressured into it, because ultimately, there is pressure on all sides from all stakeholders. Giving up on $10 billion, no matter how you slice it, is a huge hit. They could have fought for it, but decided not to, based on whatever pressures they were reacting too. That's a win.
- bogomipz 8y ago
  >"Corporations are not people. Judge them by their actions, in the end, what matters is what happened, not intent." Oh nonsense, corporations are run by people. People who make deliberate decisions on behalf of the company. And implicit trust is bestowed upon these stewards of the company by the company's employees. I think theres a tacit understanding that these people will balance both shareholder value and ethical concerns. A such intent very much matters.
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    Intent is imputed, you can't know it for certain, or even very well. As an outside observer, employee, or shareholder, you can assign intent all you want, but at the end of the day, the only real evidence you have is action. Look, I'm a Google employee, I really like Sundar, he comes off as a pretty authentic, caring person. But what he says in "official statements", even internal communications, like every company, is very much authored by committee, by corporate messaging, by legal, it is not his voice alone. So if Sundar says he's doing something because it's morally right, should I believe that's the reason, because in less 'official' statements, in his own words, he comes off as a genuine person? Or, should I disbelieve it, because in more official communications, it comes off as overly parsed and triangulated? You face the same issue with politicians. Politicians say they truly believe one thing, they announce their intent, and then when they get into office, you find their voting records quite a bit different than what you believed them to be for. I think you should judge these politicians by their actions, not their campaign speeches, not their heartfelt fireside chats, but what -- when the rubber meets the road -- they vote for. The votes don't lie, protestations of piety can.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Amazon has a big head start, so Google might be trying to save face by declaring themselves out of the contest.

azurezyq 8y ago

Let's talk about this item only. I don't think that's all ethics related stuffs. The Pentagon's something different for me. I'm a Chinese and I definitely know that the Pentagon WILL use technology to fight against us. Should I write code for them? Or I should trust them not abusing? If your country is on the other side of NATO, what do you think?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
claydavisss 8y ago
If you've willingly chosen to reside in the US then your tax dollars are supporting this work regardless of who fulfills the contract.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  Though extremely difficult, it's possible to exist in the USA without paying any tax to any entity. You would have to be unemployed, receive food and water through non-sales-tax-included methods (like living in New Hampshire or going to a local soup kitchen or boiling grass), and never own a home or rent even. Well come to think of it, you could probably eat sleep and drink at a casino all day, if it's on native land.
  - kbar13 8y ago
    yeah but you're still paying for a service from a provider which pays tax to the government
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      No, I literally described situations where nobody is paying taxes. Most shops in NH and non-profits don't make enough revenue to pay taxes on it. And native american land by it's definition is not taxed.
  - village-idiot 8y ago

philwelch 8y ago

> Not buying their moral arguments at all, given that they are about to enter the Chinese market again Their "moral" concerns are driven by the noisy section of their workforce that reflexively opposes the US military. These people aren't outspoken about the behavior of the Chinese government, in fact they probably don't think about it much.

mattnewton 8y ago
I should probably keep my mouth shut, but as a Google employee I can assure you I am concerned about both and I am not alone. My views are my own, etc
- jtl999 8y ago
  Thanks for what you do.
  - Strongerpass 8y ago
    What did he do?
jpatokal 8y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe...
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
That is completely untrue. Googlers seem to be just as upset over the China project as they were over the Pentagon thing. * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe... * https://www.foxnews.com/tech/google-employees-quit-over-controversial-china-search-engine-project-report-says https://www.foxnews.com/tech/google-employees-quit-over-cont... I don't know who told you that, but you shouldn't trust them.
- 8y ago

dkhenry 8y ago

I think its less of tailoring for AWS and more that AWS is worlds ahead of Google and Microsoft in their commercial offerings, and especially their government offerings. For instance Google Cloud does not have a High certification from FedRAMP which would rule it out being used for any workload that involved weapons systems which generally are FISMA High. I think what was dome was less writing it for AWS and more just writing it to have the requirements you would want out of any public cloud offering. The problem is most companies have been providing a "good enough for government work" solution and now they can't fulfill the RFP. ( Amazon is in this boat too, there are tons of services that haven't been cleared yet, and GovCloud is expensive and only exists in one region, in that respect Microsoft has been ahead, but they have their own problems)

Strongerpass 8y ago
How is AWS worlds ahead Microsoft in their commercial cloud offerings? I work with both and to me they seem very similar.
- dkhenry 8y ago
  At the most basic level performance is way below what I have seen with AWS. It was taking about 20 times longer to load data into a database cluster in Azure then into AWS. Additionally Azure is _just_ getting Availability zones online. Previously if you wanted high availability you needed to use multiple regions. I have yet to be able to create a kubernetes cluster using the UI, and I am not even sure how Users work since they have this odd hybrid Active Directory setup that may or may not be users. On the flip side It was painless to use both GCP and AWS and even second tier cloud providers like Digital Ocean or Packet.net are simpler to use then Azure. My standing advice for anyone is only use Azure if you are 100% in the Microsoft ecosystem using .NET and Visual Studio to develop your applications, and you plan on using their professional services to help you out when you hit problems
  - ct520 8y ago
    I use digital ocean, aws , heroku, azure almost weekly. For ... I can’t remember. Years. I think your opinion is bias and I don’t share the same sentitiment. But like you it’s just my opinion. Cloud providers bounce back and forth on features. Not everyone is right at that given point for the client. But I have seen the converge over the years, with each service having plus and minuses.

p0rkbelly 8y ago

Moral concerns can go both ways as well. We don't know what the Pentagon will use the raw compute/storage resources for. I'm sure they are not telling MS/AWS/GOOG either. I do know that the US Military invests heavily to make weapons better at killing, but also better at killing the right targets. Let's assume the due to US politics war is unavoidable. But, because of investments in technology (smarter drones, AI, guidance systems) in systems powered by the JEDI project we are now able to reduce civilian casualties by 90% in a military conflict. Hell even 10% is a huge win. Is this now a morally just cause?

BurningFrog 8y ago
When your assumption is also your conclusion, you have what's called a "circular argument". It's obviously true, but says nothing about anything outside itself.
- p0rkbelly 8y ago
  Maybe I was being too Socratic? But, philosophy/logic was never my strong suit. Perhaps that's why I'm an engineer flirting with mediocrity...

matt4077 8y ago

There might actually be a continuous spectrum of both morality and profitability of different actions... Google doesn't care about any possible humility of not getting a DOJ contract. Because nobody would notice, and those who do are more likely to see it as a positive, considering the DOJ's reputation in procurement. It also doesn't cost anything relevant to stay in. And even if the probability may be small small, the magnitude is enormous. Leaving us with no clear motive BUT something that may have to do with morality. Of course this may be motivated by worries about their reputation among current and potential employees, but then we're getting into the whole "what's true altruism" debate which is rarely as productive as even fake altruism.

StreamBright 8y ago

I am not buying it either. Corporations do not have moral. The board might have some political considerations but we know that entering the Chinese market mean that Google had to accept things that are amoral.

tinkerteller 8y ago

The problem with China is that government isn’t magically going to remove sensorship and Google had zero impact on their policy by staying out. It seems right move to me that Google will provide slightly more open search and other apps and may be able to instigate bit more openness. So going in seems like right strategy then staying out even if there was no money involved.