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Agree with this point: Sixthly, moral and ethics are set arbitrarily. The U.S. domestic politics dominate every discussion. At this very moment, thousands of U

Agree with this point: Sixthly, moral and ethics are set arbitrarily. The U.S. domestic politics dominate every discussion. At this very moment, thousands of Uyghurs are put into concentration camps based on computer vision algorithms invented by this community, and nobody seems even remotely to care. Adding a "broader impact" section at the end of every people will not make this stop. There are huge shitstorms because a researcher wasn't mentioned in an article. Meanwhile, the 1-billion+ people continent of Africa is virtually excluded from any meaningful ML discussion (besides a few Indaba workshops).

LatteLazy 6y ago
Maybe I am misunderstanding but... Why does a community need a moral stance on external issues? If everyone is there to do/learn/advance machine learning, isn't that the end of it? It isn't their purpose to engage with Chinese or other issues. Edit: I think it makes sense to have a stance on Machine Learning moral issues in a machine learning group. I just don't think you need to have a stance on every issue ever. I say this as someone always a bit frustrated that HN and Reddit etc are very US centric.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  If a community has a stance on US politics which interact with it only incidentally — which the community very much does have, to the point of distraction, it is alleged — then the community can damn well afford to have a stance on international politics when the advancements the community builds are key tools in building the engines of tyrannical repression.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    I think it's fine to take a stance on things central to the groups main function: don't supply ML Tech for immoral use. But beyond that? That's a lot of issues you need to make stances on before you can actually do any machine learning work...
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      This issue isn't beyond that. The question is how a commitment to not supply ML tech for immoral use is compatible with supplying it to a country that's genociding the Uighurs.
    - crispyambulance 6y ago
      > don't supply ML Tech for immoral use. But beyond that? There's a lot to that and it goes beyond the scope of what researchers can handle by themselves. It's an effort that involves more than just the researchers, though they will take a central role. For one thing, how do you evaluate whether a usage is "immoral"? How do you enforce correct usage? These are difficult questions with multifaceted answers which no one has yet elucidated (yes, it has to be more than "I'll know it when I see it").
      - LatteLazy 6y ago
        This is exactly my point. You can get general agreement to "do no evil". But every step you take to be specific makes the amount of discussion and detail exponentially more difficult. So you can't have a specific stance on everything. You either take a specific stance on a small number of issues central to the community or a general stance, or you spend all your time creating and amending stances and do nothing else.
- andyjohnson0 6y ago
  > Maybe I am misunderstanding but... Why does a community need a moral stance on external issues? If everyone is there to do/learn/advance machine learning, isn't that the end of it? It isn't their purpose to engage with Chinese or other issues. Because its wrong to write-off the mistreatment of other human beings as an external issue. It never is: we're all human and we all share the same planet.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    So any group anywhere needs to have a stance on every injustice everywhere? Isn't that exhausting?
    - SiempreViernes 6y ago
      You just need to take a stance on injustice classes, after that its simply classification. Surely you can muster that much moral effort?
      - LatteLazy 6y ago
        Sorry, what's a class in this context I'm more than happy to say something like "injustice everywhere is bad and we should oppose it and not let our technology be used to support it". But I feel that's a bit less than people expect?
    - crispyambulance 6y ago
      > Isn't that exhausting? Eventually, but this is a unique time right now. People are paying attention to injustice. I would say that much of these "stances" are inauthentic and done just for PR reasons. We'll see who is being genuine and who is phony soon enough.
      - protomyth 6y ago
        No, people are paying attention to some injustice. They don't give a damn about other injustices unless they can wrap those back into one of their causes. They'll visit Native Americans when its something about environment, but ignore them when it comes to police violence.
- deleuze 6y ago
  How the technology you develop is used is an "external issue"? Ivory tower much?
  - kiliantics 6y ago
    Would you say the issues are more "rhizomatic"? ;)
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  > Why does a community need a moral stance on external issues? Some communities choose to do so. Einstein, Szilard, Pauling (and others) formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists to argue against nuclear weapons at the dawn of the Atomic era. And many scientists have taken a stand against nuclear weapons since then. Their actions have, at least, influenced the proliferation of these weapons and informed the public about their dangers. Would you argue that it wasn't "their business?" One could make a case that machine learning has negative consequences/possibilities that are similar in scope to nuclear weapons. The people who work with and understand machine learning are in the best position to take a stand against abuse of these technologies. I would say it's their responsibility to speak out, otherwise a despot will do it for them.
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    > Their actions have, at least, influenced the proliferation of these weapons How? The number of nuclear weapons was growing rapidly until the 80s, to the point where dozens of bombs were aimed at single targets. > informed the public about their dangers Seeing the effects of bombs informed the public, not a committee
    - crispyambulance 6y ago
      > How? The number of nuclear weapons was growing rapidly until the 80s. It's hard to assess their impact, but that doesn't mean it was insignificant. Could we have been in a worse position? Definitely. Someone might have "pushed the button" by now were it not for decades of work from organizations (some of whom consisted of scientists) lobbying against nuclear weapons and their proliferation. > Seeing the effects of bombs informed the public, not a committee The nuclear tests demonstrated that the weapons work. There are other effects such as "nuclear winter" that have not been (and hopefully never will be) demonstrated. Sadly, because of Chernobyl, we do have examples of what happens to contaminated areas. Understanding and communicating the effects beyond "blast radius" is best done by scientists and health experts.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Not every community does. The ML community generally believes they're obligated to have moral stances on external issues because they believe machine learning has great potential to cause harm if not properly controlled.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Thanks. I guess I can admire the intent and the recognition of consequences of important tech. Honestly though, I'm glad I'm not responsible for organising that sort of response...
- whytaka 6y ago
  The world is changing vigorously. Trust is breaking down domestically and internationally. For some, it was never trust but an oppressive stability. People are anxious about who they are dealing with because who rises to power now will determine which subcultures will enjoy great political prominence and who will have their voices silenced in the near future. The battle is over values, standards, and world views. A lot is at stake. Technology is the ultimate medium now. Technologies like machine learning shapes discussions like money and GDP figures continues to shape discussions about the state of societies the world over. Ignore the strategically important position that technology holds now and in the future of our society at your own peril. To be so willfully blind to the changing times, I can’t imagine a less engaged worldview.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  If your research is used to create such ill that on net throwing every researcher in your field into the sea would be a lesser evil the question of external issues at least deserves a look lest you miss an opportunity to avert harm. Note I do not support tossing ml researchers into the sea and lots of industries are worse.
Udik 6y ago
> thousands of Uyghurs are put into concentration camps based on computer vision algorithms invented by this community I saw this repeated frequently in the last few days, and I think I've missed some important info. I know that China uses face recognition for surveillance purpose, and that it detains a substantial share of the Uighur population for supposed violations of the law. I miss a link between the two: is China using AI to detect who is Uighur and arrest him/ her for this very fact? Does anyone have more info?
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveill...
  - Udik 6y ago
    Thank you, but this article seems to say that the technology is used to track Uighurs (I suppose for the reason that some of them have been engaging in terrorist activities) and not to incarcerate them. Despite the scale- which we considered worrying in itself and for understandable reasons- this seems to be an automated version of "I suddenly see a lot of mafioso-looking guys congregating here, let's keep an eye to see if there's anything dodgy going on"- which has been practiced with skilled eyes since forever. And it's a whole different thing from "if I see anyone looking Jewish I'll round them up and send them to a concentration camp".
    - cycomanic 6y ago
      > Thank you, but this article seems to say that the technology is used to track Uighurs (I suppose for the reason that some of them have been engaging in terrorist activities) and not to incarcerate them. That's a weird suggestion. It's undisputed that they have put millions into detention camps, so are you suggesting they all have been engaging in "terrorist activities"? So why suggest ("suppose" ) that they have been engaging in terrorist activities? > Despite the scale- which we considered worrying in itself and for understandable reasons- this seems to be an automated version of "I suddenly see a lot of mafioso-looking guys congregating here, let's keep an eye to see if there's anything dodgy going on"- which has been practiced with skilled eyes since forever. And it's a whole different thing from "if I see anyone looking Jewish I'll round them up and send them to a concentration camp". The article literally said they are looking for (tracking) Uighurs because of their ethnic appearance. That is looking for "Jewish" , not looking "mafioso-looking" in your example above

LatteLazy 6y ago

Maybe I am misunderstanding but... Why does a community need a moral stance on external issues? If everyone is there to do/learn/advance machine learning, isn't that the end of it? It isn't their purpose to engage with Chinese or other issues. Edit: I think it makes sense to have a stance on Machine Learning moral issues in a machine learning group. I just don't think you need to have a stance on every issue ever. I say this as someone always a bit frustrated that HN and Reddit etc are very US centric.

fennecfoxen 6y ago
If a community has a stance on US politics which interact with it only incidentally — which the community very much does have, to the point of distraction, it is alleged — then the community can damn well afford to have a stance on international politics when the advancements the community builds are key tools in building the engines of tyrannical repression.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  I think it's fine to take a stance on things central to the groups main function: don't supply ML Tech for immoral use. But beyond that? That's a lot of issues you need to make stances on before you can actually do any machine learning work...
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    This issue isn't beyond that. The question is how a commitment to not supply ML tech for immoral use is compatible with supplying it to a country that's genociding the Uighurs.
  - crispyambulance 6y ago
    > don't supply ML Tech for immoral use. But beyond that? There's a lot to that and it goes beyond the scope of what researchers can handle by themselves. It's an effort that involves more than just the researchers, though they will take a central role. For one thing, how do you evaluate whether a usage is "immoral"? How do you enforce correct usage? These are difficult questions with multifaceted answers which no one has yet elucidated (yes, it has to be more than "I'll know it when I see it").
    - LatteLazy 6y ago
      This is exactly my point. You can get general agreement to "do no evil". But every step you take to be specific makes the amount of discussion and detail exponentially more difficult. So you can't have a specific stance on everything. You either take a specific stance on a small number of issues central to the community or a general stance, or you spend all your time creating and amending stances and do nothing else.
andyjohnson0 6y ago
> Maybe I am misunderstanding but... Why does a community need a moral stance on external issues? If everyone is there to do/learn/advance machine learning, isn't that the end of it? It isn't their purpose to engage with Chinese or other issues. Because its wrong to write-off the mistreatment of other human beings as an external issue. It never is: we're all human and we all share the same planet.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  So any group anywhere needs to have a stance on every injustice everywhere? Isn't that exhausting?
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    You just need to take a stance on injustice classes, after that its simply classification. Surely you can muster that much moral effort?
    - LatteLazy 6y ago
      Sorry, what's a class in this context I'm more than happy to say something like "injustice everywhere is bad and we should oppose it and not let our technology be used to support it". But I feel that's a bit less than people expect?
  - crispyambulance 6y ago
    > Isn't that exhausting? Eventually, but this is a unique time right now. People are paying attention to injustice. I would say that much of these "stances" are inauthentic and done just for PR reasons. We'll see who is being genuine and who is phony soon enough.
    - protomyth 6y ago
      No, people are paying attention to some injustice. They don't give a damn about other injustices unless they can wrap those back into one of their causes. They'll visit Native Americans when its something about environment, but ignore them when it comes to police violence.
deleuze 6y ago
How the technology you develop is used is an "external issue"? Ivory tower much?
- kiliantics 6y ago
  Would you say the issues are more "rhizomatic"? ;)
crispyambulance 6y ago
> Why does a community need a moral stance on external issues? Some communities choose to do so. Einstein, Szilard, Pauling (and others) formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists to argue against nuclear weapons at the dawn of the Atomic era. And many scientists have taken a stand against nuclear weapons since then. Their actions have, at least, influenced the proliferation of these weapons and informed the public about their dangers. Would you argue that it wasn't "their business?" One could make a case that machine learning has negative consequences/possibilities that are similar in scope to nuclear weapons. The people who work with and understand machine learning are in the best position to take a stand against abuse of these technologies. I would say it's their responsibility to speak out, otherwise a despot will do it for them.
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  > Their actions have, at least, influenced the proliferation of these weapons How? The number of nuclear weapons was growing rapidly until the 80s, to the point where dozens of bombs were aimed at single targets. > informed the public about their dangers Seeing the effects of bombs informed the public, not a committee
  - crispyambulance 6y ago
    > How? The number of nuclear weapons was growing rapidly until the 80s. It's hard to assess their impact, but that doesn't mean it was insignificant. Could we have been in a worse position? Definitely. Someone might have "pushed the button" by now were it not for decades of work from organizations (some of whom consisted of scientists) lobbying against nuclear weapons and their proliferation. > Seeing the effects of bombs informed the public, not a committee The nuclear tests demonstrated that the weapons work. There are other effects such as "nuclear winter" that have not been (and hopefully never will be) demonstrated. Sadly, because of Chernobyl, we do have examples of what happens to contaminated areas. Understanding and communicating the effects beyond "blast radius" is best done by scientists and health experts.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Not every community does. The ML community generally believes they're obligated to have moral stances on external issues because they believe machine learning has great potential to cause harm if not properly controlled.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Thanks. I guess I can admire the intent and the recognition of consequences of important tech. Honestly though, I'm glad I'm not responsible for organising that sort of response...
whytaka 6y ago
The world is changing vigorously. Trust is breaking down domestically and internationally. For some, it was never trust but an oppressive stability. People are anxious about who they are dealing with because who rises to power now will determine which subcultures will enjoy great political prominence and who will have their voices silenced in the near future. The battle is over values, standards, and world views. A lot is at stake. Technology is the ultimate medium now. Technologies like machine learning shapes discussions like money and GDP figures continues to shape discussions about the state of societies the world over. Ignore the strategically important position that technology holds now and in the future of our society at your own peril. To be so willfully blind to the changing times, I can’t imagine a less engaged worldview.
michaelmrose 6y ago
If your research is used to create such ill that on net throwing every researcher in your field into the sea would be a lesser evil the question of external issues at least deserves a look lest you miss an opportunity to avert harm. Note I do not support tossing ml researchers into the sea and lots of industries are worse.

Udik 6y ago

> thousands of Uyghurs are put into concentration camps based on computer vision algorithms invented by this community I saw this repeated frequently in the last few days, and I think I've missed some important info. I know that China uses face recognition for surveillance purpose, and that it detains a substantial share of the Uighur population for supposed violations of the law. I miss a link between the two: is China using AI to detect who is Uighur and arrest him/ her for this very fact? Does anyone have more info?

NikolaeVarius 6y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveill...
- Udik 6y ago
  Thank you, but this article seems to say that the technology is used to track Uighurs (I suppose for the reason that some of them have been engaging in terrorist activities) and not to incarcerate them. Despite the scale- which we considered worrying in itself and for understandable reasons- this seems to be an automated version of "I suddenly see a lot of mafioso-looking guys congregating here, let's keep an eye to see if there's anything dodgy going on"- which has been practiced with skilled eyes since forever. And it's a whole different thing from "if I see anyone looking Jewish I'll round them up and send them to a concentration camp".
  - cycomanic 6y ago
    > Thank you, but this article seems to say that the technology is used to track Uighurs (I suppose for the reason that some of them have been engaging in terrorist activities) and not to incarcerate them. That's a weird suggestion. It's undisputed that they have put millions into detention camps, so are you suggesting they all have been engaging in "terrorist activities"? So why suggest ("suppose" ) that they have been engaging in terrorist activities? > Despite the scale- which we considered worrying in itself and for understandable reasons- this seems to be an automated version of "I suddenly see a lot of mafioso-looking guys congregating here, let's keep an eye to see if there's anything dodgy going on"- which has been practiced with skilled eyes since forever. And it's a whole different thing from "if I see anyone looking Jewish I'll round them up and send them to a concentration camp". The article literally said they are looking for (tracking) Uighurs because of their ethnic appearance. That is looking for "Jewish" , not looking "mafioso-looking" in your example above