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Don't they teach people not to bring politics to work anymore? Rule #1 at work: don't talk or engage in politics

KingMachiavelli 8y ago
The current relization is that you often cannot work without being political because your work in some way is political. In this specific instance, organizing a walk out, does seem to go much farther than what you would expect your employer to tolerate. Typical people who work typical jobs are fired for far less so the real suprise in being told that your 'role' is changing is that you still have a job at all. Ultimently, I have little faith in these kinds of demonstrations - perhaps it will work for FAANGS since they have a pretty somewhat limitied supply of talent/employees. But for the majority of the tech industry, I expect the ability to choose where you work and the ability to organize unions will be a much more effective means of employee influence.
consumer451 8y ago
In this case it was Google who brought politics into the office. I don't understand why Google, or anyone with a choice, would have involved political hacks in the decision making process for ethics in their company's products. Oh.. [0] > Controversy followed almost immediately after the Heritage Foundation president was named to the eight-person council, with some speculating that her addition was Google's attempt to appease conservative lawmakers who have accused the tech giant of anti-conservative bias. Look, I am sick of being politically correct about this. In modern times America's GOP true-believers have become the party of "alternate facts" on a variety of issues. Do you want your AI driver/doctor/accountant/climatologist to use alternate facts, or actual facts? Aside from that particular argument, I don't think any dogmatic groups should be involved in AI in any way. People from political think tanks should be excluded by default, as they clearly have a bias. I don't care who they are, left/right/whatever. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board-2019-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-boa...

The current relization is that you often cannot work without being political because your work in some way is political. In this specific instance, organizing a walk out, does seem to go much farther than what you would expect your employer to tolerate. Typical people who work typical jobs are fired for far less so the real suprise in being told that your 'role' is changing is that you still have a job at all. Ultimently, I have little faith in these kinds of demonstrations - perhaps it will work for FAANGS since they have a pretty somewhat limitied supply of talent/employees. But for the majority of the tech industry, I expect the ability to choose where you work and the ability to organize unions will be a much more effective means of employee influence.

consumer451 8y ago

In this case it was Google who brought politics into the office. I don't understand why Google, or anyone with a choice, would have involved political hacks in the decision making process for ethics in their company's products. Oh.. [0] > Controversy followed almost immediately after the Heritage Foundation president was named to the eight-person council, with some speculating that her addition was Google's attempt to appease conservative lawmakers who have accused the tech giant of anti-conservative bias. Look, I am sick of being politically correct about this. In modern times America's GOP true-believers have become the party of "alternate facts" on a variety of issues. Do you want your AI driver/doctor/accountant/climatologist to use alternate facts, or actual facts? Aside from that particular argument, I don't think any dogmatic groups should be involved in AI in any way. People from political think tanks should be excluded by default, as they clearly have a bias. I don't care who they are, left/right/whatever. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board-2019-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-boa...