4 ms·

The problem is not so much that a corporation has political opinions (or rather that the executives have political opinions and don't keep work and politics sep

The problem is not so much that a corporation has political opinions (or rather that the executives have political opinions and don't keep work and politics separate.) None of that is particularly unusual. The problem in this case is this particular company believes they have enough power to decide the outcome of elections. Or more accurately, the problem is that they might be right.

Isamu 7y ago
>believes they have enough power to decide the outcome of elections. Or more accurately, the problem is that they might be right. But if so, they already spectacularly failed to prevent a Trump election. Or maybe they failed to predict it, but aren’t they uniquely positioned to do so? How does this paint a picture of dangerous political influence?
- Fellshard 7y ago
  They actively discussed taking more steps to prevent it, instead of relying on failed predictions to justify inaction. As for why they failed to predict it in the first place: worldview bubbles strongly affected perception. No need to really examine data on something you and everyone around you believes is an impossibility. That's all part and parcel of what that All-hands meeting discussed; I'd highly recommend finding it and listening to it.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Do you have evidence of where Google has stated that they are trying to prevent a future Trump government ?
    - drak0n1c 7y ago
      There are internal PDFs, interview with cooperating Google whistleblower, and undercover video footage of a separate executive on the topic - all accessible here: https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/ https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whis...
      - cromwellian 7y ago
        Veritas completely misunderstands and twists what 'fairness' and 'cognitive bias' in AI is. AI can only learn what you feed it. Choices in what data is given to AI can bias the outputs, and then bias people who become blinded that the inputs are biased. So for example, if I only ever feed an AI training data about doctors and nurses in which the male examples are only ever used for doctor, and the female examples are only ever used nurse, then when you or anyone else ask's what a doctor or nurse is, the output has a gender bias. This is Google Search becoming an unwitting amplifier in cognitive bias and stereotypes. Now you might counter that "most" doctors are male, and "most" nurses are female and that's reality, but when I ask for the definition of what a doctor is and what it does, I'm not asking for demographics. These guys are taking concerns that are openly discussed in AI conventions among experts and ethicists as a worry, and twisting it to fit their own scared political agenda. We've had examples of this already with image classification networks classifying dark-skinned people are gorillas, which is clearly because the training dataset itself is unconsciously biased. How do you detect when these biases occur? You need a diverse group of human evaluations to review the outcomes to make sure the AI hasn't learned the wrong biases. Or at the very least, you need that group of people to construct a good integration test set to look for misclassifications. Seems what's going on, is someone taking complex technical issues, twisting them, and feeding them to politicians like Gohmert who clearly won't understand any nuance. If Veritas wants government to regulate AI to protect conservative viewpoints, he may end up regretting getting the government involved.
    - Fellshard 7y ago
      That same all-hands. If you can stomach the host site, the video is still quite untouched. I'm not sure the video was hosted elsewhere, or I'd use a different host instead. https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl...
  - bduerst 7y ago
    I'm not sure that's true. There's a leaked email between two developers joking about it, but that's far from proof the organization was considering it. They've demonetized/dropped ads for satire news websites, which also includes The Onion, but that was a response to the criticism that they are enabling fake news to become more prominent.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "they already spectacularly failed to prevent a Trump election." They were not trying to prevent it. Google was just a search engine, trying to do their best. Since Trump, their view on information has changed from 'neutral' to 'fairness'. Their view of 'fairness' is politically loaded, and examples are given in the docs. There is no doubt that Google can change the outcome of elections - this is for sure. If they really wanted to put their finger on the scales hard, they could. I'm very concerned about the recent revelations, and I don't think that their 'fairness' policy is actually fair, but I wonder how much effect it will actually have. It's so hard to measure.
sangnoir 7y ago
> Or more accurately, the problem is that they might be right. This has been true for a long time - it was true for multiple Murdoch companies since the 80's. Hearst declared, in 1898 "You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war"[1] edit: to be clear, I'm not condoning this reality, but it is not a new phenomenon. 1. https://www.iancfriedman.com/?p=29 https://www.iancfriedman.com/?p=29
- seieste 7y ago
  Both Murdoch and Hearst ran publishing entities, whereas Google and other social media sites claim to be neutral platforms. This distinction is important because certain protections given to neutral platforms don’t necessarily apply to publishers. (For instance, Reddit can’t be held accountable for libel posted on their site by someone else since they’re just a platform. )
  - root_axis 7y ago
    This is an oft-repeated falsehood. There is no such distinction between platforms and publishers as far as online websites go. The law is very explicit about this, google section 230.
    - btilly 7y ago
      Please clarify what part of it you consider to be a falsehood. Google returned results such as https://www.minclaw.com/legal-resource-center/what-is-section-230-of-the-communication-decency-act-cda/ https://www.minclaw.com/legal-resource-center/what-is-sectio... and https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 which suggest that there is a difference. Very specifically, if a site has applied editorial discretion like a publisher does, it is then liable for what is said. If it just reposts content provided by others, it has a safe harbor. By my lay reading, automated filtering intended to support a specific point of view would seem to be a grey area.
      - root_axis 7y ago

Isamu 7y ago

>believes they have enough power to decide the outcome of elections. Or more accurately, the problem is that they might be right. But if so, they already spectacularly failed to prevent a Trump election. Or maybe they failed to predict it, but aren’t they uniquely positioned to do so? How does this paint a picture of dangerous political influence?

Fellshard 7y ago
They actively discussed taking more steps to prevent it, instead of relying on failed predictions to justify inaction. As for why they failed to predict it in the first place: worldview bubbles strongly affected perception. No need to really examine data on something you and everyone around you believes is an impossibility. That's all part and parcel of what that All-hands meeting discussed; I'd highly recommend finding it and listening to it.
- threeseed 7y ago
  Do you have evidence of where Google has stated that they are trying to prevent a future Trump government ?
  - drak0n1c 7y ago
    There are internal PDFs, interview with cooperating Google whistleblower, and undercover video footage of a separate executive on the topic - all accessible here: https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/ https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whis...
    - cromwellian 7y ago
      Veritas completely misunderstands and twists what 'fairness' and 'cognitive bias' in AI is. AI can only learn what you feed it. Choices in what data is given to AI can bias the outputs, and then bias people who become blinded that the inputs are biased. So for example, if I only ever feed an AI training data about doctors and nurses in which the male examples are only ever used for doctor, and the female examples are only ever used nurse, then when you or anyone else ask's what a doctor or nurse is, the output has a gender bias. This is Google Search becoming an unwitting amplifier in cognitive bias and stereotypes. Now you might counter that "most" doctors are male, and "most" nurses are female and that's reality, but when I ask for the definition of what a doctor is and what it does, I'm not asking for demographics. These guys are taking concerns that are openly discussed in AI conventions among experts and ethicists as a worry, and twisting it to fit their own scared political agenda. We've had examples of this already with image classification networks classifying dark-skinned people are gorillas, which is clearly because the training dataset itself is unconsciously biased. How do you detect when these biases occur? You need a diverse group of human evaluations to review the outcomes to make sure the AI hasn't learned the wrong biases. Or at the very least, you need that group of people to construct a good integration test set to look for misclassifications. Seems what's going on, is someone taking complex technical issues, twisting them, and feeding them to politicians like Gohmert who clearly won't understand any nuance. If Veritas wants government to regulate AI to protect conservative viewpoints, he may end up regretting getting the government involved.
  - Fellshard 7y ago
    That same all-hands. If you can stomach the host site, the video is still quite untouched. I'm not sure the video was hosted elsewhere, or I'd use a different host instead. https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl...
- bduerst 7y ago
  I'm not sure that's true. There's a leaked email between two developers joking about it, but that's far from proof the organization was considering it. They've demonetized/dropped ads for satire news websites, which also includes The Onion, but that was a response to the criticism that they are enabling fake news to become more prominent.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
"they already spectacularly failed to prevent a Trump election." They were not trying to prevent it. Google was just a search engine, trying to do their best. Since Trump, their view on information has changed from 'neutral' to 'fairness'. Their view of 'fairness' is politically loaded, and examples are given in the docs. There is no doubt that Google can change the outcome of elections - this is for sure. If they really wanted to put their finger on the scales hard, they could. I'm very concerned about the recent revelations, and I don't think that their 'fairness' policy is actually fair, but I wonder how much effect it will actually have. It's so hard to measure.

sangnoir 7y ago

> Or more accurately, the problem is that they might be right. This has been true for a long time - it was true for multiple Murdoch companies since the 80's. Hearst declared, in 1898 "You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war"[1] edit: to be clear, I'm not condoning this reality, but it is not a new phenomenon. 1. https://www.iancfriedman.com/?p=29 https://www.iancfriedman.com/?p=29

seieste 7y ago
Both Murdoch and Hearst ran publishing entities, whereas Google and other social media sites claim to be neutral platforms. This distinction is important because certain protections given to neutral platforms don’t necessarily apply to publishers. (For instance, Reddit can’t be held accountable for libel posted on their site by someone else since they’re just a platform. )
- root_axis 7y ago
  This is an oft-repeated falsehood. There is no such distinction between platforms and publishers as far as online websites go. The law is very explicit about this, google section 230.
  - btilly 7y ago
    Please clarify what part of it you consider to be a falsehood. Google returned results such as https://www.minclaw.com/legal-resource-center/what-is-section-230-of-the-communication-decency-act-cda/ https://www.minclaw.com/legal-resource-center/what-is-sectio... and https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 which suggest that there is a difference. Very specifically, if a site has applied editorial discretion like a publisher does, it is then liable for what is said. If it just reposts content provided by others, it has a safe harbor. By my lay reading, automated filtering intended to support a specific point of view would seem to be a grey area.
    - root_axis 7y ago