26 ms·

Google’s new AI ethics board is already falling apart

157 points by cpeterso 8y ago

iratewizard 8y ago
I've contracted for four different teams at Google and have only been underwhelmed by their people. Especially those who weren't engineers. This is not a surprise to me by any means.
- ma2rten 8y ago
  Why?
  - imhelpingu 8y ago
    Probably because it's rapidly becoming the quintessentially evil corporation, and there's a correlation between not having a problem with that and being a ding-bat who belongs in a cult. edit: I mean it. I'm a programmer and I would not work at Google. It would not matter what their offer was. In my eyes, people who work at Google are hurting their prestige as opposed to helping it.
    - autokad 8y ago
      I don't think there are any evil companies. people are people, and they are pretty much the same everywhere. I think big tech's mistake was trying to pretend they were somehow better and is now getting called out on it.
elliekelly 8y ago
If we allow the big five to write the regulations and set the standards that will govern the technology for decades to come we're going to have major regrets.
- VikingCoder 8y ago
  We should all be so lucky that any company or group of companies hold themselves to a HIGHER standard than the law enforces. But yes, if the companies are setting the legal bar, we should be vigilant that they're not exploiting our ignorance.
hirundo 8y ago
> Panel member Joanna Bryson, defending Coles James’s inclusion on Twitter, said, “I know that I have pushed [Google] before on some of their associations, and they say they need diversity in order to be convincing to society broadly, e.g. the GOP.” Yet anyone appointed to the board will be vetted for conservative associations or statements, and if found, be objected to by the same people who object to James. Google will either have to drop this goal or be prepared to anger large numbers of their employees.
- dodobirdlord 8y ago
  There are politically conservative organizations that do not have the baggage of the long history of transparent bad-faith argument that the Heritage Foundation has. I think it's fairly reasonable to assert that the quality of any discussion would be improved by removing all representatives of the Heritage Foundation. Moreover, some things are not worth re-litigating. A person who is opposed to same-sex marriage has no place in a discussion of technical ethics.
  - Aqua 8y ago
    > A person who is opposed to same-sex marriage has no place in a discussion of technical ethics. Following this logic you're saying that ~30% of the population[0] is unworthy of discussing ethics. I find it amusing how Google has become hostage of its own employees in so many aspects. There already have been outrages when it comes to China censorship projects, military projects and now this. It gives Google a lot of bad publicity and I suppose it got out of control. If you think about it, no other company experiences employee revolt to the same degree as Google. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_mar...
    - Traster 8y ago
      You say they're hostage to their employees but they've actually appointed someone from the heritage foundation. Conservative politics basically has nothing to offer silicon valley. They don't represent them, they constantly vilify them and their employees as 'liberal coastal elites' and they literally don't have a policy agenda on the issue. Yet somehow they get invited in as a leader in this area. That sounds a lot more like Google is hostage to outside political interests than their employees' political interests.
xiphias2 8y ago
From what I read about AI researchers and their optimism, I'm on the side of belief that it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox?wprov=sfla1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox?wprov=sfla1). An ethics board would never be strong enough to stop AI development in the world if needed. We can't even limit CO2 output of the world with policy, and AI will be much more profitable than oil. There's a strong agreement between most AI researchers that the biggest problem AI creates is the loss of jobs, and AGI is just too far to worry about, but I feel that at the same time they all hope to be the one who create the first AGI.
- est31 8y ago
  There is a difference in the problems that AI might create in the future (destroying all humans) vs the problems it creates now. E.g. AI products had worse STT capabilties for people with a spanish accent or from black backgrounds than american english speakers. Other AIs had more errors with black people. This board's mission is not to prevent an AGI to become self aware and destroy all humans as a natural conclusion of being self aware. Personally I think this scenario is pretty unlikely anyway.
  - xiphias2 8y ago
    I'm more worried about attack vs defence assymetry increasing in the world than a self aware AI destroying it. You just need 1 crazy human and extremely strong assymetrical warfare. If you look at the cases when a human killed lots of people with a truck, and see that in 20 years with cheap self flying drones a crazy person can kill even more people, you can extrapolate this and get to a sad conclusion (at least I did that).
    - 0x2AF31DA8 8y ago
      https://qntm.org/asteroids https://qntm.org/asteroids > I believe that there is a threshold of power beyond which nobody can be trusted. Where, in fact, it is impossible for any entity to even theoretically demonstrate the track record of judgement, responsibility and infallibility that would be necessary.
GuiA 8y ago
There is nothing fundamentally different between AI and “traditional algorithms” when it comes to ethical considerations. Sure, the current crop of AI systems perform unbelievably well on tasks that “traditional algorithms” suck at, but it is a change in degree, not in kind. In the overwhelming majority of pieces reflecting on AI ethics, you can replace “AI” with “algorithms”, “big data”, “computers”, “technology”, etc and not get a significant change in meaning. Many people have had their livelihood, rights, image, etc attacked in some way by technologically mediated processes that were deployed by organizations that didn’t think things through, or prioritized eg profits over other concerns, or had anti-humanist agendas. This phenomenon is certainly accelerated by the ever increasing ubiquity of computing systems, but it certainly predates them. AI does not bring anything radically different to the table in that regard, and if Google does not seem to care much about the ethical implications of their technology in general (see for instance the YouTube/children fiasco), why would they care about AI ethics specifically?
- naasking 8y ago
  I think you're wrong. The tooling around training ML is becoming progressively more accessible, so much so that within ten years you won't even need a programmer to train an AI for many tasks. Who knows where that will be in 20 years.
  - fwn 8y ago
    But what you're saying, which seems to be that technology is getting more accessible over time, does not appear to me to be fundamentally different for other technological means, be it algorithms, ai or digitalization in general.
    - naasking 8y ago
      It is different. Algorithms require understanding what the algorithm does, how it operates. Lay people can't do this without significant training. AI/ML in principle simply requires example mappings of inputs and outputs. Lay people can do this.
naasking 8y ago
It's bizarre to me that people can't seem to understand that any such panel requires vehement disagreement to make real and meaningful progress. You need people whose opinions are diametrically opposed to constantly challenge each other. Even people who hate each other or each other's opinions. What you don't need is another echo chamber. Go debate on Twitter, Facebook or Reddit if that's what you're looking for.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hirundo 8y ago
  Really, or is it just about where you'd place the Overton window? Should they include a white supremacist, pedophile, human extinction advocate, etc? If so you're being consistent. If not where would you draw the line? By the popularity of the ideology?
  - solotronics 8y ago
    If you don't include people you disagree with politically they will go off and form their own group independent of yours. I can imagine the defense contractors banding together and making a new Manhattan Project for general AI. Wouldn't it be better to have an ethics board that includes all the big players?
    - gowld 8y ago
      Either they'd do that anyway when they didn't get whichever killbot they wanted, or else they'd convince you to build the killbot you wanted, and in either case you end up with the killbots you don't want, so inviting them to your ethics board doesn't help. The defense contractors haven't invited you to their ethics board.
    - sgt101 8y ago
      Darpa are keenly looking at this. They have to because its important that such advances would change the strategic situation. But, let's be honest, it's science fiction. There is no prospect of aig at all in our life times.
xparco 8y ago
Lol ethics + Google....you have to be a brainwashed prole to believe anything good coming from them
RickJWagner 8y ago
James is also the first African-American to be head of the Heritage Foundation, she is a member of the NASA Advisory Council and she is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans. Apparently all this is ignorable by the angry mob. This madness must stop. True diversity means listening to qualified and civil voices from all over the political spectrum. Google must stand up.
- itdaniher 8y ago
  > True diversity means listening to qualified and civil voices... Referring to the leadership of Heritage as "civil" is a stretch from the point of view of individuals in categories repeatedly demeaned and dehumanized by the members of the organization acting in their official capacities.
- gowld 8y ago
  Are you saying that because she's African-American she's automatically qualified for an ethics council? Ethics isn't about who you are, it's about whose lives you value.
  - RickJWagner 8y ago
    No, of course that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying she is an intelligent, very well-accomplished member of the minority community. The kind of person you need on an ethics council. Is there anything she's done (personally, directly) that you find upsetting? Or is just being politically conservative enough to disqualify her in your opinion?
davesque 8y ago
I feel as though any sort of ethics board intended to do some kind of self-policing within an industry is doomed to fail. Have we seen any evidence in the past decade that the concerns of a company's investors won't eventually supersede all other considerations? It would be nice if the government had teeth nowadays and if the opinions of academics were taken at all seriously. Then there would be a US Federal AI Ethics Board. And we might have a US Federal Climate Action Board too. Alas, we're content to leave the ethical considerations to those who have every incentive to ignore them.
ummonk 8y ago
The board seems like a pointless exercise, given that it only meets 4 times in the year, and doesn't have any policy-making power. It's crazy that people are calling for someone to be expelled from the board because they're from a conservative think thank though. You want a diversity of viewpoints at the table.
- gowld 8y ago
  They aren't excited for having viewpoints like "transgendered people are all either crazy or liars" at the table.
  - bigj0n 8y ago
    Source of the quote?
    - zavi 8y ago
      Imagination and anger
- thundergolfer 8y ago
  People are protesting it because she's unqualified and holds abhorrent positions on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights. This is a board concerned with AI Ethics, and so diversity isn't really an important part of the game. If she forwards positions which are unethical, and would forward a vision of AI that is unethical, then she should not be on the board. Google shouldn't be so meek as to pretend that she has a valuable perspective on these issues merely being being conservative. Conservatives have been wrong on incredibly important issues many times before.
  - Robelius 8y ago
    Isn't the point of having different viewpoints so that they can argue over what is ethical? What's the point of a board to make decisions if everyone fundamentally believes the same thing? At that point, you already made your decisions and are trying to reinforce them in an echo chamber. When some people say they want a diverse field of thought, what they really mean is they want a diverse field of thought that they agree with. I don't agree with some of her views, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't have a voice.
tree_of_item 8y ago
> Today @heritage will critique gender identity @UN_CSW because powerful nations are pressing for the radical redefining of sex. If they can change the definition of women to include men, they can erase efforts to empower women economically, socially, and politically. #CSW63 There are many other people who are saying the same thing about gender identity. It's strange that Vox describes this as "a particular cause for concern". It's not about "dehumanizing" trans people, it's about self-identification not being a valid basis for a law. If the Equality Act passes as written then the addition of gender identity would effectively remove sex as a protected characteristic. It doesn't look like this board was a very good idea if the members were not okay with the first sign of disagreement. Will Google's actual AI projects even listen to this group at this point? It reminds me of AMP claiming to have a community driving the specification when in reality Google is just going to do whatever they want.
m3kw9 8y ago
Yeah when you have ethics which potentially on collision course with profits, you lose to the $$$
avs733 8y ago
Everybody is making this out to be about the membership...it seems far simpler than that. It seems poorly thought out from the start. Not in membership but in mandate. The (minimal) description that Goog provides seems to put this group somewhere between an institutional review board (IRB) and a strategic advisory board. What is their role? is it make to policy, provide guidance, provide rulings on ethical reasonableness What is their authority? can they make suggestions, shut down programs, implement restrictions What are their boundaries/goals? Who's authority do they act with? Every element of what goog provided on this is incredibly vague. I am absolutely willing to bet that there were mixed messages occurred to the mix of people coming from academia (where IRBs are a thing) and industry (where IRBs are not a thing). Also, this paragraph from the vox article: "Next, the ethics panel — as has been the case with ethics panels at other top tech companies — does not have the power to do anything. Google says “we hope this effort will inform both our own work and the broader technology sector,” but it’s very unclear who, if anyone, at Google will rely on these recommendations and which decisions the board will get to make recommendations about." Really bothers me. It summarizes a statement from google incorrectly. Google doesn't say they have no power - it simply doesn't say. That difference is subtle but important to the entire discussion here...and google hurt itself by writing an incredibly vague statement from start to finish. What these companies need is an independent IRB - but that will never happen, and the fact that it won't tells you everything you need to know about their commitment to ethical development of AI. What they are doing now is conflating visioning, strategy, and tactics as if for AI they suddenly become the same But to end by diving into the politicized portion of this...everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but your opinion is not entitled to place or space. That especially includes opinions that differ over the basic humanity of a certain group of people. We've done that many times over our species history - it's time to stop. That opinion is not valid. More directly, having contrary viewpoints is not an inherent value - having useful disagreements is. Putting a flat earther on the NASA science board is likely to create 'vehement disagreement' but it does not contribute to 'real and meaningful progress' (with apologies to naasking who I am quoting as an example rather than a nexplicit critque). The effort to encompass all viewpoints is inherently problematic in the formation of the AI review boards - because it undermines the fundamental concept of ironclad rules that have undergirded research ethics since failures like Miligan, Nazi experimentation, the Tuskegee experiment, and others.
cranesan 8y ago
"AI Ethics Board" but not one member of the board is an AI...
- chillacy 8y ago
  When AI gains sentience, I'm embarrassed to think how they'll reflect on how we've treated them.
1024core 8y ago
> and met four times over the course of 2019 to consider concerns about Google’s AI program..... and then > A role on Google’s AI board is an unpaid, toothless position that cannot possibly, in four meetings over the course of a year, ... Maybe the author does not know that 2019 is barely 3 months in? There is no way that the phrase "over the course of a year" can apply to 2019. It is bullshit like this that makes me tune out of such articles. It's just dripping with uninformed bias.
- kevinh 8y ago
  If you put the first quote in context, it would be clear that they were consistent. > The board, founded to guide “responsible development of AI” at Google, would have had eight members and met four times over the course of 2019 to consider concerns about Google’s AI program. It's saying that it would have met four times over the year, not that it already has.
sschueller 8y ago
This is a board of stakeholders not ethics.
killjoywashere 8y ago
The Google AI Council (1) bears a strong resemblance to the Defense Innovation Board (2). I think Google's main error is that the membership was too small. The dilutional power of increased membership would have made it harder to make a show out of any individual selectee. Plenty of board memberships are unpaid, specifically the DoD has a bunch of them. The parent organization still pays all the fees for events, so the members are on a level playing field. As for disadvantaging the poor ... what? These councils are literally about establishing leadership positions at the national and international level. You need people with intimate visibility on the great issues of our time. If you're starting a board on prison reform, then, sure, a couple ex-cons should be on the board. But even then, you're going to look for an ex-con who went on to build a business or change the world in some way. I don't know. I've presented to some of these "toothless" boards before, and I have to say, they were, to a T, very clever people who have worked very hard for their whole lives. I don't get the sense they're in it for the press or even for the networking. They're thinking hard and working hard, trying to get a CEO or equivalent leader to turn the ship. (1) https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/external-advisory-council-help-advance-responsible-development-ai/ https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/external-advisory-coun... (2) https://innovation.defense.gov/Members/ https://innovation.defense.gov/Members/
nigr 8y ago
lmao
throwawaysea 8y ago
Why do the opinions of these Google employees matter on an issue like this? Employees don't get to be involved in unrelated areas/decisions/functions of the company that are not directly related to their specific role. The company is also not obligated to explain themselves to those employees. Does everyone need to be involved in every last facet of the company in some strange 90,000 person design-by-committee process? Obviously not, and so Google needs to stop tolerating the constant stream of leaks and internal activism. If these employees don't want to work there, let them quit or fire them. If they are disrupting the workplace by constantly fomenting outrage on the Internet, fire them. If they are hurting the company's brand and working against the interests of the company (or shareholders) by engaging in self-serving political activism, fire them. If they disrespect and alienate most of their customer base by only advocating for their own worldview, fire them. This should be uncontroversial - after all, many others will line up for those jobs and Google will be just fine. These leakers/activists/organizers need to realize how this looks. They are soliciting external signatures on this petition, and frankly those external signatures don't matter - it appears any random person can sign it (for example I see rank-and-file employees at various companies and individual university students). They should further realize that the opinions of Google employees alone do not matter. Those of their global customer base, however, do matter. And even so, only 2000 of 98000 employees have signed this letter anyways. I hope Google leadership shows some spine and recognizes that they do not have to fear a small number of employees or manufactured outrage on Twitter. In all likelihood, at least half of Google's customer base does not agree with the US far-left progressive view on trans issues. Even here in America, only 8% are progressives after all (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo...). And like this article notes, the two-thirds of America that do not belong to either political extreme are simply exhausted. And I, as a customer of Google, am also exhausted by the constant stream of political controversy caused by a small subset of their employees. So I ask again, why should this company care at all what their skewed internal demographic has to say? If Google is actually truly exposed to some kind of risk due to attrition, and actually fears that more than a few lone activists will quit, then that is a serious failure of leadership. It is the job of the CEO to reduce exposure to that risk - whether by hiring a more ideologically-diverse staff or by managing with a heavier hand to put and end to this constant activism.
olleromam91 8y ago
If AI is going to learn from the information that exists in reality.. a biased world.. it will inherit those biases. Artificially removing these biases from an AI would essentially be altering it's understanding of objective reality.. and that doesn't sound great either.
romanovcode 8y ago
The sole purpose of that board was PR. Now that they realized it of course they will quit.
PunksATawnyFill 8y ago
Google is a monument to hypocrisy. Look at the way they said they would "punish" "non-mobile-friendly" sites... and then they purposefully DISABLE ZOOMING on their own mobile sites. Jagoffs.
- remon 8y ago
  Mature, balanced and on topic opinion.

157 points by cpeterso 8y ago

I've contracted for four different teams at Google and have only been underwhelmed by their people. Especially those who weren't engineers. This is not a surprise to me by any means.

ma2rten 8y ago
Why?
- imhelpingu 8y ago
  Probably because it's rapidly becoming the quintessentially evil corporation, and there's a correlation between not having a problem with that and being a ding-bat who belongs in a cult. edit: I mean it. I'm a programmer and I would not work at Google. It would not matter what their offer was. In my eyes, people who work at Google are hurting their prestige as opposed to helping it.
  - autokad 8y ago
    I don't think there are any evil companies. people are people, and they are pretty much the same everywhere. I think big tech's mistake was trying to pretend they were somehow better and is now getting called out on it.

elliekelly 8y ago

If we allow the big five to write the regulations and set the standards that will govern the technology for decades to come we're going to have major regrets.

VikingCoder 8y ago
We should all be so lucky that any company or group of companies hold themselves to a HIGHER standard than the law enforces. But yes, if the companies are setting the legal bar, we should be vigilant that they're not exploiting our ignorance.

hirundo 8y ago

> Panel member Joanna Bryson, defending Coles James’s inclusion on Twitter, said, “I know that I have pushed [Google] before on some of their associations, and they say they need diversity in order to be convincing to society broadly, e.g. the GOP.” Yet anyone appointed to the board will be vetted for conservative associations or statements, and if found, be objected to by the same people who object to James. Google will either have to drop this goal or be prepared to anger large numbers of their employees.

dodobirdlord 8y ago
There are politically conservative organizations that do not have the baggage of the long history of transparent bad-faith argument that the Heritage Foundation has. I think it's fairly reasonable to assert that the quality of any discussion would be improved by removing all representatives of the Heritage Foundation. Moreover, some things are not worth re-litigating. A person who is opposed to same-sex marriage has no place in a discussion of technical ethics.
- Aqua 8y ago
  > A person who is opposed to same-sex marriage has no place in a discussion of technical ethics. Following this logic you're saying that ~30% of the population[0] is unworthy of discussing ethics. I find it amusing how Google has become hostage of its own employees in so many aspects. There already have been outrages when it comes to China censorship projects, military projects and now this. It gives Google a lot of bad publicity and I suppose it got out of control. If you think about it, no other company experiences employee revolt to the same degree as Google. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_mar...
  - Traster 8y ago
    You say they're hostage to their employees but they've actually appointed someone from the heritage foundation. Conservative politics basically has nothing to offer silicon valley. They don't represent them, they constantly vilify them and their employees as 'liberal coastal elites' and they literally don't have a policy agenda on the issue. Yet somehow they get invited in as a leader in this area. That sounds a lot more like Google is hostage to outside political interests than their employees' political interests.

xiphias2 8y ago

From what I read about AI researchers and their optimism, I'm on the side of belief that it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox?wprov=sfla1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox?wprov=sfla1). An ethics board would never be strong enough to stop AI development in the world if needed. We can't even limit CO2 output of the world with policy, and AI will be much more profitable than oil. There's a strong agreement between most AI researchers that the biggest problem AI creates is the loss of jobs, and AGI is just too far to worry about, but I feel that at the same time they all hope to be the one who create the first AGI.

est31 8y ago
There is a difference in the problems that AI might create in the future (destroying all humans) vs the problems it creates now. E.g. AI products had worse STT capabilties for people with a spanish accent or from black backgrounds than american english speakers. Other AIs had more errors with black people. This board's mission is not to prevent an AGI to become self aware and destroy all humans as a natural conclusion of being self aware. Personally I think this scenario is pretty unlikely anyway.
- xiphias2 8y ago
  I'm more worried about attack vs defence assymetry increasing in the world than a self aware AI destroying it. You just need 1 crazy human and extremely strong assymetrical warfare. If you look at the cases when a human killed lots of people with a truck, and see that in 20 years with cheap self flying drones a crazy person can kill even more people, you can extrapolate this and get to a sad conclusion (at least I did that).
  - 0x2AF31DA8 8y ago
    https://qntm.org/asteroids https://qntm.org/asteroids > I believe that there is a threshold of power beyond which nobody can be trusted. Where, in fact, it is impossible for any entity to even theoretically demonstrate the track record of judgement, responsibility and infallibility that would be necessary.

GuiA 8y ago

There is nothing fundamentally different between AI and “traditional algorithms” when it comes to ethical considerations. Sure, the current crop of AI systems perform unbelievably well on tasks that “traditional algorithms” suck at, but it is a change in degree, not in kind. In the overwhelming majority of pieces reflecting on AI ethics, you can replace “AI” with “algorithms”, “big data”, “computers”, “technology”, etc and not get a significant change in meaning. Many people have had their livelihood, rights, image, etc attacked in some way by technologically mediated processes that were deployed by organizations that didn’t think things through, or prioritized eg profits over other concerns, or had anti-humanist agendas. This phenomenon is certainly accelerated by the ever increasing ubiquity of computing systems, but it certainly predates them. AI does not bring anything radically different to the table in that regard, and if Google does not seem to care much about the ethical implications of their technology in general (see for instance the YouTube/children fiasco), why would they care about AI ethics specifically?

naasking 8y ago
I think you're wrong. The tooling around training ML is becoming progressively more accessible, so much so that within ten years you won't even need a programmer to train an AI for many tasks. Who knows where that will be in 20 years.
- fwn 8y ago
  But what you're saying, which seems to be that technology is getting more accessible over time, does not appear to me to be fundamentally different for other technological means, be it algorithms, ai or digitalization in general.
  - naasking 8y ago
    It is different. Algorithms require understanding what the algorithm does, how it operates. Lay people can't do this without significant training. AI/ML in principle simply requires example mappings of inputs and outputs. Lay people can do this.

naasking 8y ago

It's bizarre to me that people can't seem to understand that any such panel requires vehement disagreement to make real and meaningful progress. You need people whose opinions are diametrically opposed to constantly challenge each other. Even people who hate each other or each other's opinions. What you don't need is another echo chamber. Go debate on Twitter, Facebook or Reddit if that's what you're looking for.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hirundo 8y ago
Really, or is it just about where you'd place the Overton window? Should they include a white supremacist, pedophile, human extinction advocate, etc? If so you're being consistent. If not where would you draw the line? By the popularity of the ideology?
- solotronics 8y ago
  If you don't include people you disagree with politically they will go off and form their own group independent of yours. I can imagine the defense contractors banding together and making a new Manhattan Project for general AI. Wouldn't it be better to have an ethics board that includes all the big players?
  - gowld 8y ago
    Either they'd do that anyway when they didn't get whichever killbot they wanted, or else they'd convince you to build the killbot you wanted, and in either case you end up with the killbots you don't want, so inviting them to your ethics board doesn't help. The defense contractors haven't invited you to their ethics board.
  - sgt101 8y ago
    Darpa are keenly looking at this. They have to because its important that such advances would change the strategic situation. But, let's be honest, it's science fiction. There is no prospect of aig at all in our life times.

xparco 8y ago

Lol ethics + Google....you have to be a brainwashed prole to believe anything good coming from them

RickJWagner 8y ago

James is also the first African-American to be head of the Heritage Foundation, she is a member of the NASA Advisory Council and she is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans. Apparently all this is ignorable by the angry mob. This madness must stop. True diversity means listening to qualified and civil voices from all over the political spectrum. Google must stand up.

itdaniher 8y ago
> True diversity means listening to qualified and civil voices... Referring to the leadership of Heritage as "civil" is a stretch from the point of view of individuals in categories repeatedly demeaned and dehumanized by the members of the organization acting in their official capacities.
gowld 8y ago
Are you saying that because she's African-American she's automatically qualified for an ethics council? Ethics isn't about who you are, it's about whose lives you value.
- RickJWagner 8y ago
  No, of course that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying she is an intelligent, very well-accomplished member of the minority community. The kind of person you need on an ethics council. Is there anything she's done (personally, directly) that you find upsetting? Or is just being politically conservative enough to disqualify her in your opinion?

davesque 8y ago

I feel as though any sort of ethics board intended to do some kind of self-policing within an industry is doomed to fail. Have we seen any evidence in the past decade that the concerns of a company's investors won't eventually supersede all other considerations? It would be nice if the government had teeth nowadays and if the opinions of academics were taken at all seriously. Then there would be a US Federal AI Ethics Board. And we might have a US Federal Climate Action Board too. Alas, we're content to leave the ethical considerations to those who have every incentive to ignore them.

ummonk 8y ago

The board seems like a pointless exercise, given that it only meets 4 times in the year, and doesn't have any policy-making power. It's crazy that people are calling for someone to be expelled from the board because they're from a conservative think thank though. You want a diversity of viewpoints at the table.

gowld 8y ago
They aren't excited for having viewpoints like "transgendered people are all either crazy or liars" at the table.
- bigj0n 8y ago
  Source of the quote?
  - zavi 8y ago
    Imagination and anger
thundergolfer 8y ago
People are protesting it because she's unqualified and holds abhorrent positions on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights. This is a board concerned with AI Ethics, and so diversity isn't really an important part of the game. If she forwards positions which are unethical, and would forward a vision of AI that is unethical, then she should not be on the board. Google shouldn't be so meek as to pretend that she has a valuable perspective on these issues merely being being conservative. Conservatives have been wrong on incredibly important issues many times before.
- Robelius 8y ago
  Isn't the point of having different viewpoints so that they can argue over what is ethical? What's the point of a board to make decisions if everyone fundamentally believes the same thing? At that point, you already made your decisions and are trying to reinforce them in an echo chamber. When some people say they want a diverse field of thought, what they really mean is they want a diverse field of thought that they agree with. I don't agree with some of her views, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't have a voice.

tree_of_item 8y ago

> Today @heritage will critique gender identity @UN_CSW because powerful nations are pressing for the radical redefining of sex. If they can change the definition of women to include men, they can erase efforts to empower women economically, socially, and politically. #CSW63 There are many other people who are saying the same thing about gender identity. It's strange that Vox describes this as "a particular cause for concern". It's not about "dehumanizing" trans people, it's about self-identification not being a valid basis for a law. If the Equality Act passes as written then the addition of gender identity would effectively remove sex as a protected characteristic. It doesn't look like this board was a very good idea if the members were not okay with the first sign of disagreement. Will Google's actual AI projects even listen to this group at this point? It reminds me of AMP claiming to have a community driving the specification when in reality Google is just going to do whatever they want.

m3kw9 8y ago

Yeah when you have ethics which potentially on collision course with profits, you lose to the $$$

avs733 8y ago

Everybody is making this out to be about the membership...it seems far simpler than that. It seems poorly thought out from the start. Not in membership but in mandate. The (minimal) description that Goog provides seems to put this group somewhere between an institutional review board (IRB) and a strategic advisory board. What is their role? is it make to policy, provide guidance, provide rulings on ethical reasonableness What is their authority? can they make suggestions, shut down programs, implement restrictions What are their boundaries/goals? Who's authority do they act with? Every element of what goog provided on this is incredibly vague. I am absolutely willing to bet that there were mixed messages occurred to the mix of people coming from academia (where IRBs are a thing) and industry (where IRBs are not a thing). Also, this paragraph from the vox article: "Next, the ethics panel — as has been the case with ethics panels at other top tech companies — does not have the power to do anything. Google says “we hope this effort will inform both our own work and the broader technology sector,” but it’s very unclear who, if anyone, at Google will rely on these recommendations and which decisions the board will get to make recommendations about." Really bothers me. It summarizes a statement from google incorrectly. Google doesn't say they have no power - it simply doesn't say. That difference is subtle but important to the entire discussion here...and google hurt itself by writing an incredibly vague statement from start to finish. What these companies need is an independent IRB - but that will never happen, and the fact that it won't tells you everything you need to know about their commitment to ethical development of AI. What they are doing now is conflating visioning, strategy, and tactics as if for AI they suddenly become the same But to end by diving into the politicized portion of this...everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but your opinion is not entitled to place or space. That especially includes opinions that differ over the basic humanity of a certain group of people. We've done that many times over our species history - it's time to stop. That opinion is not valid. More directly, having contrary viewpoints is not an inherent value - having useful disagreements is. Putting a flat earther on the NASA science board is likely to create 'vehement disagreement' but it does not contribute to 'real and meaningful progress' (with apologies to naasking who I am quoting as an example rather than a nexplicit critque). The effort to encompass all viewpoints is inherently problematic in the formation of the AI review boards - because it undermines the fundamental concept of ironclad rules that have undergirded research ethics since failures like Miligan, Nazi experimentation, the Tuskegee experiment, and others.

cranesan 8y ago

"AI Ethics Board" but not one member of the board is an AI...

chillacy 8y ago
When AI gains sentience, I'm embarrassed to think how they'll reflect on how we've treated them.

1024core 8y ago

> and met four times over the course of 2019 to consider concerns about Google’s AI program..... and then > A role on Google’s AI board is an unpaid, toothless position that cannot possibly, in four meetings over the course of a year, ... Maybe the author does not know that 2019 is barely 3 months in? There is no way that the phrase "over the course of a year" can apply to 2019. It is bullshit like this that makes me tune out of such articles. It's just dripping with uninformed bias.

kevinh 8y ago
If you put the first quote in context, it would be clear that they were consistent. > The board, founded to guide “responsible development of AI” at Google, would have had eight members and met four times over the course of 2019 to consider concerns about Google’s AI program. It's saying that it would have met four times over the year, not that it already has.

sschueller 8y ago

This is a board of stakeholders not ethics.

killjoywashere 8y ago

The Google AI Council (1) bears a strong resemblance to the Defense Innovation Board (2). I think Google's main error is that the membership was too small. The dilutional power of increased membership would have made it harder to make a show out of any individual selectee. Plenty of board memberships are unpaid, specifically the DoD has a bunch of them. The parent organization still pays all the fees for events, so the members are on a level playing field. As for disadvantaging the poor ... what? These councils are literally about establishing leadership positions at the national and international level. You need people with intimate visibility on the great issues of our time. If you're starting a board on prison reform, then, sure, a couple ex-cons should be on the board. But even then, you're going to look for an ex-con who went on to build a business or change the world in some way. I don't know. I've presented to some of these "toothless" boards before, and I have to say, they were, to a T, very clever people who have worked very hard for their whole lives. I don't get the sense they're in it for the press or even for the networking. They're thinking hard and working hard, trying to get a CEO or equivalent leader to turn the ship. (1) https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/external-advisory-council-help-advance-responsible-development-ai/ https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/external-advisory-coun... (2) https://innovation.defense.gov/Members/ https://innovation.defense.gov/Members/

nigr 8y ago

lmao

throwawaysea 8y ago

Why do the opinions of these Google employees matter on an issue like this? Employees don't get to be involved in unrelated areas/decisions/functions of the company that are not directly related to their specific role. The company is also not obligated to explain themselves to those employees. Does everyone need to be involved in every last facet of the company in some strange 90,000 person design-by-committee process? Obviously not, and so Google needs to stop tolerating the constant stream of leaks and internal activism. If these employees don't want to work there, let them quit or fire them. If they are disrupting the workplace by constantly fomenting outrage on the Internet, fire them. If they are hurting the company's brand and working against the interests of the company (or shareholders) by engaging in self-serving political activism, fire them. If they disrespect and alienate most of their customer base by only advocating for their own worldview, fire them. This should be uncontroversial - after all, many others will line up for those jobs and Google will be just fine. These leakers/activists/organizers need to realize how this looks. They are soliciting external signatures on this petition, and frankly those external signatures don't matter - it appears any random person can sign it (for example I see rank-and-file employees at various companies and individual university students). They should further realize that the opinions of Google employees alone do not matter. Those of their global customer base, however, do matter. And even so, only 2000 of 98000 employees have signed this letter anyways. I hope Google leadership shows some spine and recognizes that they do not have to fear a small number of employees or manufactured outrage on Twitter. In all likelihood, at least half of Google's customer base does not agree with the US far-left progressive view on trans issues. Even here in America, only 8% are progressives after all (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo...). And like this article notes, the two-thirds of America that do not belong to either political extreme are simply exhausted. And I, as a customer of Google, am also exhausted by the constant stream of political controversy caused by a small subset of their employees. So I ask again, why should this company care at all what their skewed internal demographic has to say? If Google is actually truly exposed to some kind of risk due to attrition, and actually fears that more than a few lone activists will quit, then that is a serious failure of leadership. It is the job of the CEO to reduce exposure to that risk - whether by hiring a more ideologically-diverse staff or by managing with a heavier hand to put and end to this constant activism.

olleromam91 8y ago

If AI is going to learn from the information that exists in reality.. a biased world.. it will inherit those biases. Artificially removing these biases from an AI would essentially be altering it's understanding of objective reality.. and that doesn't sound great either.

romanovcode 8y ago

The sole purpose of that board was PR. Now that they realized it of course they will quit.

PunksATawnyFill 8y ago

Google is a monument to hypocrisy. Look at the way they said they would "punish" "non-mobile-friendly" sites... and then they purposefully DISABLE ZOOMING on their own mobile sites. Jagoffs.

remon 8y ago
Mature, balanced and on topic opinion.