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Is this what esteemed PhD AI ethicists spend their time on? It sounds like a useless grad school paper. I think much less of everyone now.

emerged 6y ago
The mistake was expecting much from “PhD AI ethicist” - a title Orwell accidentally left out.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Medical ethics is a serious subject, and then there was Asilomar on the ethics of genetic engineering. Just because this AI ethicist isn't one, it doesn't follow the field is worthless.
  - emerged 6y ago
    I’m going to stand by my post even though AI ethics should be a genuine field. Call me cynical.
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA was a high-caliber event. The paper here, done at Google, a leading AI company isn't, and the ethics-washing on view here is deeply concerning.
      - emerged 6y ago
        That’s the crux of the problem. Top tier academia and ethics both attract the absolute best and the absolute worst. So I suppose we need both the critical cynicism and the optimists in threads like these.
LudwigNagasena 6y ago
This is exactly what I would expect from an “AI ethicist” to be honest.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  The thing is, that's about all an AI ethicist can say. The problem is there isn't that much to modern "AI"/machine learning. It's just brute force approximation/simulation/curve-fitting. There's a lot of tweaking, a lot of data and a lot of processing power. It does a lot but fails unpredictably and has unpredictable (or predictable) biases and leaves you at the mercy of a black box. There, I've repeated the paper without reading it. But Google did hire her to be an AI ethicist so what else would they expect?
karmasimida 6y ago
The significance of their job is imagined at best, borderline academic welfare. Guess that is why Google can make the choice to remove her this quickly. They lose nothing but face.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  It’s academic welfare but also woke political welfare / a PR exercise. It shouldn’t be legitimized because it is just inviting unnecessary political controversy into the workplace.

emerged 6y ago

The mistake was expecting much from “PhD AI ethicist” - a title Orwell accidentally left out.

HarryHirsch 6y ago
Medical ethics is a serious subject, and then there was Asilomar on the ethics of genetic engineering. Just because this AI ethicist isn't one, it doesn't follow the field is worthless.
- emerged 6y ago
  I’m going to stand by my post even though AI ethics should be a genuine field. Call me cynical.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA was a high-caliber event. The paper here, done at Google, a leading AI company isn't, and the ethics-washing on view here is deeply concerning.
    - emerged 6y ago
      That’s the crux of the problem. Top tier academia and ethics both attract the absolute best and the absolute worst. So I suppose we need both the critical cynicism and the optimists in threads like these.

LudwigNagasena 6y ago

This is exactly what I would expect from an “AI ethicist” to be honest.

joe_the_user 6y ago
The thing is, that's about all an AI ethicist can say. The problem is there isn't that much to modern "AI"/machine learning. It's just brute force approximation/simulation/curve-fitting. There's a lot of tweaking, a lot of data and a lot of processing power. It does a lot but fails unpredictably and has unpredictable (or predictable) biases and leaves you at the mercy of a black box. There, I've repeated the paper without reading it. But Google did hire her to be an AI ethicist so what else would they expect?

karmasimida 6y ago

The significance of their job is imagined at best, borderline academic welfare. Guess that is why Google can make the choice to remove her this quickly. They lose nothing but face.

throwawaysea 6y ago
It’s academic welfare but also woke political welfare / a PR exercise. It shouldn’t be legitimized because it is just inviting unnecessary political controversy into the workplace.