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People certainly could just quit when they feel their company is not doing the right thing. But people who care about their mission and the company might stay

People certainly could just quit when they feel their company is not doing the right thing. But people who care about their mission and the company might stay and do something like this because they genuinely want to improve things. Maybe if more employees used their leverage to improve companies from within we could see real progress in work environments and corporate ethics without having to wait on legislation or lawsuits to force companies to change.

claydavisss 6y ago
Their "mission" is to find conflict, or lacking that, create it. What is the "mission" otherwise? The entire field of "Ethical AI" is a total joke that serves as nothing but a conduit to inject college-grade identity politics into the work environment. There is literally nothing else to this field. Frankly Google should terminate the entire team.
zug_zug 6y ago
Agreed. Sometimes we like to pretend that "corporations" are entities themselves, but the truth is they are just groups of people. The people have all the power, and all the accountability.
pontus 6y ago
Yes, I think if people were really trying to improve their companies from within that's a great idea. I don't think that's what's happening here though. I like to pose the following thought experiment to people who like driving fancy cars: if your car looked like an old honda civic from the outside but had all the bells and whistles and looked stunning from the inside, would you still want it? The point of the experiment is to show that a nontrivial part of the reason why people drive fancy cars is the signal that it sends to other people. Similarly here, if there was a mechanism to improve a company from within that was anonymous so that you wouldn't get any credit whatsoever for it's improvement, would they use it? It's human nature to want credit, so I wouldn't blame people for not wanting to use it, but let's be honest about there being a nontrivial part to all of this that is founded in virtue signaling and in-group/out-group tribalism).
- GVIrish 6y ago
  I could be wrong but I would think that most people would prefer being able to quietly lobby for improvement at their company rather than going public and putting their job and career on the line. There are certainly rabble rousers out there whose first instinct is always to draw public attention to themselves but it doesn't seem like that's the case here.
  - pontus 6y ago
    Yes, I agree. I just suspect that the people involved here are not like that. If what they really wanted was to improve things at Google, they would not be asking for her to be rehired and promoted. There is literally zero chance that will happen and surely they know this.

claydavisss 6y ago

Their "mission" is to find conflict, or lacking that, create it. What is the "mission" otherwise? The entire field of "Ethical AI" is a total joke that serves as nothing but a conduit to inject college-grade identity politics into the work environment. There is literally nothing else to this field. Frankly Google should terminate the entire team.

zug_zug 6y ago

Agreed. Sometimes we like to pretend that "corporations" are entities themselves, but the truth is they are just groups of people. The people have all the power, and all the accountability.

pontus 6y ago

Yes, I think if people were really trying to improve their companies from within that's a great idea. I don't think that's what's happening here though. I like to pose the following thought experiment to people who like driving fancy cars: if your car looked like an old honda civic from the outside but had all the bells and whistles and looked stunning from the inside, would you still want it? The point of the experiment is to show that a nontrivial part of the reason why people drive fancy cars is the signal that it sends to other people. Similarly here, if there was a mechanism to improve a company from within that was anonymous so that you wouldn't get any credit whatsoever for it's improvement, would they use it? It's human nature to want credit, so I wouldn't blame people for not wanting to use it, but let's be honest about there being a nontrivial part to all of this that is founded in virtue signaling and in-group/out-group tribalism).

GVIrish 6y ago
I could be wrong but I would think that most people would prefer being able to quietly lobby for improvement at their company rather than going public and putting their job and career on the line. There are certainly rabble rousers out there whose first instinct is always to draw public attention to themselves but it doesn't seem like that's the case here.
- pontus 6y ago
  Yes, I agree. I just suspect that the people involved here are not like that. If what they really wanted was to improve things at Google, they would not be asking for her to be rehired and promoted. There is literally zero chance that will happen and surely they know this.