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The very next sentence is: > Our network emphasizes listening to those who are marginalized and impacted by AI, and advocating for anti-oppressive technologies

The very next sentence is: > Our network emphasizes listening to those who are marginalized and impacted by AI, and advocating for anti-oppressive technologies. So do you disagree with the idea that power is problematically unevenly distributed, and disagree that listening to the marginalized and being anti-oppression is good? If not, and you merely disagree with being explicit about the politics of technology, why? The status-quo politics of AI is "how can we make lots and lots of money from this?". Challenging that politics is good, even if you agree with amoral capital accumulation.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I disagree that this is the status-quo politics. The vast majority of AI research papers don't discuss making lots of money at all.
logicchains 6y ago
>So do you disagree with the idea that power is problematically unevenly distributed, and disagree that listening to the marginalized and being anti-oppression is good? None of this is science. Science does not and can not make value judgements; it cannot say that any distribution of anything is "bad", it cannot say that any particular outcome is good or bad. This has been known for over two thousand years, as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument (mentioned by Sextus Empiricus, the father of empiricism). Moral judgements are the realm of politics and philosophy, and there are plenty of journals dedicated to that. Nature is supposed to be dedicated to science.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  Science is inherently normative. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum without norms or values. Science is ultimately in the service of people, if some distribution is harming individuals, it’s bad. That’s the relativistic moral framing of our society.
- mnky9800n 6y ago
  It's like you are ignoring science is theory driven and theories are created by people. It's like that nonsense paper in nature that says data is so plentiful we can give up on theories and just find correlations. Except that data isn't objectively delivered to scientists from the universe. The choice of how you measure a phenomena is as theory laden as the explanation.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  There's plenty of moral judgements in science. Gene-engineering babies is outlawed. 'Do no harm' is one of the basic principles of medical research. Military science is guided by the interests of the state and its (moral) objectives. Everywhere you go in science you will encounter moral sentiments at the basis of research. It would be totally equally scientific to experiment on babies, yet we don't do it, and listening to scientists and ethicists on these issues is part of doing science. Ethical debate is intertwined with research. There is in fact no iron law on how to do science at all and maybe reading some Feyerabend is in order. Science is a social process, and keeping ethics out of science in fact constraints discourse about science in a way that has no justification at all. It impoverishes science by supposing that scientists behave like sort of autistic robots outside of society at large, which they of course are not.
cousin_it 6y ago
What are the best arguments for the view that AI scientists are a (possibly innocent and sincere) part of a money-hungry dragon, but political activists aren't a (possibly innocent and sincere) part of a power-hungry dragon?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I disagree that this is the status-quo politics. The vast majority of AI research papers don't discuss making lots of money at all.

logicchains 6y ago

>So do you disagree with the idea that power is problematically unevenly distributed, and disagree that listening to the marginalized and being anti-oppression is good? None of this is science. Science does not and can not make value judgements; it cannot say that any distribution of anything is "bad", it cannot say that any particular outcome is good or bad. This has been known for over two thousand years, as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument (mentioned by Sextus Empiricus, the father of empiricism). Moral judgements are the realm of politics and philosophy, and there are plenty of journals dedicated to that. Nature is supposed to be dedicated to science.

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
Science is inherently normative. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum without norms or values. Science is ultimately in the service of people, if some distribution is harming individuals, it’s bad. That’s the relativistic moral framing of our society.
mnky9800n 6y ago
It's like you are ignoring science is theory driven and theories are created by people. It's like that nonsense paper in nature that says data is so plentiful we can give up on theories and just find correlations. Except that data isn't objectively delivered to scientists from the universe. The choice of how you measure a phenomena is as theory laden as the explanation.
Barrin92 6y ago
There's plenty of moral judgements in science. Gene-engineering babies is outlawed. 'Do no harm' is one of the basic principles of medical research. Military science is guided by the interests of the state and its (moral) objectives. Everywhere you go in science you will encounter moral sentiments at the basis of research. It would be totally equally scientific to experiment on babies, yet we don't do it, and listening to scientists and ethicists on these issues is part of doing science. Ethical debate is intertwined with research. There is in fact no iron law on how to do science at all and maybe reading some Feyerabend is in order. Science is a social process, and keeping ethics out of science in fact constraints discourse about science in a way that has no justification at all. It impoverishes science by supposing that scientists behave like sort of autistic robots outside of society at large, which they of course are not.

cousin_it 6y ago

What are the best arguments for the view that AI scientists are a (possibly innocent and sincere) part of a money-hungry dragon, but political activists aren't a (possibly innocent and sincere) part of a power-hungry dragon?