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Some of these "AI ethics researchers" seem like wingnuts, and their profession appears to serve more of a PR purpose than a business purpose. What am I missing?

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• gregorygoc 6y ago
  Your observations are correct. Its the latter.
• sgt101 6y ago
  It's a bit of a tragedy to be honest. We/I lived through both developing social networking and big data, and it's pretty clear that the community made huge mistakes that both hurt loads of people and we can't really take back or clear up at this point. Bad things happened to innocent people. Bad people got power over good people and did bad things with it. AI has at least as much potential to be dangerous, ethical constraints on it are important when you consider the failure of common sense and community good will for SN and BD. However, every berk going latched onto the idea that they could write some sort of rubbish about "applying type 1 and type 2 thinking in AI design" or "why robots can't really be people" and have founded community dedicated to promoting themselves and getting money at the expense of insight and real work and real constraints developed by people who know what they are on about and can really help.
  • creato 6y ago
    I think most of the "AI ethics" thing is two things: first, for people that are actual AI practitioners, it makes "AI" seem a lot more powerful and interesting than it is. I think AI is a small part of the example problems you mentioned. Second, it's a way for humanities types to wedge themselves into a hot, high paying field.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • sgt101 6y ago
      I think it's unwise to minimize the impact and significance of AI at this time - this is the same sort of thinking that prevented proactive and effective management of Social Networking and Big Data technologies. We have to take it seriously this time round, and if it proves to be a y2k thing - well no problem. You are right about the humanities types - the otherside of the coin is that there is a definite class of insight that should come out of social sciences and history that is relevant here. Unfortunately those fields are dominated by bullshit artists which means that the signal to noise ratio is very very low.
• randycupertino 6y ago
  So, I work in medical research and was headhunted by (but turned down) Juul to work on sponsored trials and research related to smoking cessation and health improvement in patients who are switching to pods. Per the article, "Google has recruited top scientists with promises of research freedom, but the limits are tested as researchers increasingly write about the negative effects of technology and offer unflattering perspectives on their employer's products." Like... these AI researchers are delusional if they think their work is truly unbiased and that they can work at a company and get paid by that company to produce unbiased research. If I took that job at Juul even though it was ridiculous $$ I would have known what I was getting into and who was buttering my bread. It's either sell your soul and move to industry and enjoy the industry $$ or stay in academia and enjoy your moral purity and being able to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day but not being able to buy a house in the Bay Area.
  • loopz 6y ago
    I don't know. On the surface of it, it seems a very good opportunity to work in an area with lots of potential, but which also need lots of regulations. You get to ensure decisions by machines will improve lives and not be unintentionally biased by any means. It's also good money, knowledgeable peers and pretty wide net for R&D. Good times! It's just a bitch that for-profit company lobby for no regulations, and fire people who speak up to power. However, we all know company culture do not tolerate speaking up to power. So these people also went about it the wrong way, and going public too soon over something that was just theoretical. What you need to do is gather evidence, and escalate as security violations internally. Use the proper channels. This is harder work than crying wolf, obviously.
    • randycupertino 6y ago
      > However, we all know company culture do not tolerate speaking up to power. So these people also went about it the wrong way, and going public too soon over something that was just theoretical. What you need to do is gather evidence, and escalate as security violations internally. Use the proper channels. This is harder work than crying wolf, obviously. This is incredibly spot-on way to describe navigating through delicate office channels to create change and also not ruffle too many feathers. Well said! Can you sit on my shoulder please and advise me real-time throughout my career? Comments like this are why hacker news is so much better than reddit!
• Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
  The "artificial intelligence" we should worry about at the moment are not computers, but corporations. And i believe they should sink money/energy into ethics the same way humans sink food/energy into ethics and i truly hope their environment does not favor the most ruthless and unethical one, in the same way i hope ours does not. Now as a species we are working on computer AI and, unsurprisingly, i would say those should use resources on ethics, too. But i agree that many of the people who have such job titles, and make it into the media, seem to be wingnuts
• marricks 6y ago
  Google created these jobs and deemed them important. Like I agree, if AI ethics researchers are doing their job correctly Google will be unhappy with them, but this is really what Google offered, lots of freedom. You can be as cynical as you want but the fact Google fired them with little rhyme or reason and destroyed their team is BAD thing, we should be upset at Google for it.
  • powerapple 6y ago
    I don't think that's true. AI ethic researchers should provide solutions, rather than simply pointing out problems, especially for companies. You need to provide solutions how things can move forward, that's your job.
    • whoooooo123 6y ago
      > You need to provide solutions how things can move forward, that's your job. I hace no expertise in the field of AI ethics, and I'm not sure what to think about the Timnit drama in general, but I don't think what you're saying here is really accurate. There can be a lot of value in pointing out problems even if you're not the one who can provide a solution. If no-one else has spotted the problem then pointing it out can draw the attention of those who might know how to fix it before things get worse. If you can say "hey, there's a flaw in the design of this rocket that means it'll explode if we launch it, wasting millions of dollars" then that's valuable to your company, even if you don't know how to design a rocket that works.