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Google should have never started hiring ethical AI researchers. They should have hired AI researchers and made their stuff available to independent ethics resea

Google should have never started hiring ethical AI researchers. They should have hired AI researchers and made their stuff available to independent ethics researchers. These independent researchers should be employed by i.e. a university and funded by government funds, maybe even additionally with an AI regulation fee (i.e. like car makers have to pay to certify their cars). It makes no sense for them to hire their critics and then think they can stay independent. You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense.

madeofpalk 6y ago
> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. It's good to be critical of your own products to make them better. But you have to actually be willing to do that for it all to work.
- evilpotatoes 6y ago
  The criticism would need to be constructive to be useful, or at least specific enough to act on. Also, you can't go embarrassing the parent company, especially one as image-conscious as google.
  - the_duke 6y ago
    Any kind of public criticism is embarrassing from a PR perspective. Either you accept that, or you don't. "Ethics researches" that can't publish public criticism , with minimal oversight restricted to preventing IP leaks, are a pointless exercise in fake responsibility posturing.
    - bitcurious 6y ago
      Agree to disagree. One of the main “enforcement arms” of ethics research is to say the unsaid things out loud. Saying them introduces legal liability onto the company in future lawsuits. I.e. “Google knew that X would result in Y and they still released X; they should pay for the damages of Y.” The PR side of ethics research barely matters in comparison.
      - minot 6y ago
        > Saying them introduces legal liability onto the company in future lawsuits. My first thought was ExxonMobil when I read this comment. > In July 1977, a senior scientist of Exxon James Black reported to the company's executives that there was a general scientific agreement at that time that the burning of fossil fuels was the most likely manner in which mankind was influencing global climate change. > According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, "The funding of academic research activity has provided the corporation legitimacy, while it actively funds ideological and advocacy organizations to conduct a disinformation campaign." Nothing has happened to Exxon Mobile. None of the executives are in prison as far as I know. You'd think the company would be bankrupt by now... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...
      - mcguire 6y ago
        Humanity has a fair history of introducing products that are later shown to have large externalized costs: tetraethyl lead, PVC, etc. I interpret your point to be that publicly investigating the harm of future products---by the only people who can do so---is a bad idea. What is the alternative? Regulation? (Gasp!) Perhaps we should start the disinformation campaigns before the products are developed. "If you are arrested on AI-provided evidence, you are guilty. Period."
    - jimbokun 6y ago
      Which is why it’s idiotic to hire people whose entire job is to create bad publicity for the company.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Few (none?) companies would be happy to pay someone to be publicly and loudly critical of their products. Especially if it wasn't constructive criticism that they could act on.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  It’s a great resource to pay people to do that internally. It’s a complete disaster to hire people who see their job description as shitting on the company publicly, with no constructive proposals for improvement.
  - nindalf 6y ago
    One of the criticisms in that paper was that training AI used a lot of electricity. That's technically true, but what's the proposal there? The power efficiency of hardware is already being increased.
    - clankyclanker 6y ago
      > what's the proposal there? That's what Google was afraid of: the alternative is to decide that the cost of the model isn't worth the effort (externalities < benefit) and to abandon it. Which might be the correct decision, but one that loses Google a lot of potential money.
      - nindalf 6y ago
        The paper didn't attempt to examine if the benefits of the model outweighed the costs. They calculated the total energy used and called it a day.
        joshuamorton 6y ago
        Correct. It left it up to the model creators to potentially evaluate those tradeoffs for future models.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Nasrudith 6y ago
        I find the conclusions ludicrous. Should we also abandon particle accelerators because they use too much electrity for ill-defined benefits? Really the claim is toxic academia style knife fighting for tenure at best.
vr46 6y ago
The last sentence here makes no sense - this is Google RESEARCH we’re talking about, and the issue is around the suppression of research, the sneaky modification of the papers by lawyers and then doubling down on the ensuing shitshow of recriminations, dirty-laundry-airing and anger of 2700 employees by firing people. Including the founder of the AI ethics unit. What’s their top priority? Optics? Or better AI? People doing research are not automatically critics, but it is their literal job in this area to ask the hard, hard questions, this is not Harry and Megan go Oprah, this is technology with far-reaching consequences.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  Well, Google says they didn't surpress research, but that the researchers didn't follow process. Now we are all having an argument - we wouldn't have that if the researchers were truly independent.
  - andyxor 6y ago
    not just that, they fired a toxic employee who was bullying her colleagues on social media and even tried to bully her bosses by throwing ultimatums. This whole drama has nothing to do with neither AI nor ethics.
marshmallow_12 6y ago
- You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. They aren't really researching ethics. This is what i think is going on there. recycling an old comment. { AI Ethical research can never be an accurate representation of the majority of humanity - or even the majority of its users! If it can it is not sustainable for any long period of time. What about far more stable principles, such as murder and racism, you ask? They are prone to being overplayed or downplayed, are state executions murder, or justice? What if the victim/ hangman happens to be black? Why should it matter? Just ignore some issues? That's misleading by omission. It would be better to just admit "yes, we at Giant Tech know our ethics are bs, but we had to put something down or our machines won't work. Maybe we are not ready for advanced ai. Maybe there's a limit on what programmers can do. Yea. We know. turns out computers DO have limits. We'll have to find other ways to make money." "But why should we say that!" cry all the executives when this speech is proposed to them. "because it's true, and if we don't act now the company is screwed. And our clients will also get screwed" is the answer of the timid executive who first suggested this. "how will the truth help us?" respond all the execs in unison. "if we can keep up the lie for long enough, we shall all long be millionaires and retired before it implodes! We shall long be out of danger! who cares if some people lose money?" "Yes, but don't you feel bad for all the shareholders? And how can we possibly fool people for decades to come that our ai isn't bs?" Responds the poor executive weakly. "By creating a fake team and telling everyone they are ethics researchers" they say. "Really they are just pawns to help us earn more money. Fish get eaten by bigger fish you know?" "can you just help me change a few lines on my press statement?" Asks the first executive.}
- jseliger 6y ago
  It may also be that Google didn't realize the extent to which they were inviting some of the more organizationally destructive and divisive elements of modern politically correct culture into their organization: https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outsiders/ https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs.... It may be that we're going to see a trend towards "Leave politics and religion at the door."
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
aabhay 6y ago
Yup, exactly. This is also the stance taken in the book Lingua Franca: > Ethics in AI should not be so convoluted as to require a separate profession; ethics should be distributed across an organization, flowing through and between individuals so that conversations of design naturally arrive at ethical questions. More crucially, everyone should have the tools to speak up and suggest improvements, so that no one person or set of people hold the keys to building ethical technology. https://linguafranca.polytopal.ai/handbook/agency https://linguafranca.polytopal.ai/handbook/agency
- StargazyPi 6y ago
  That's a great resource (that links to even more great resources) - thanks for posting it. I disagree that professional ethicists aren't needed in an organisation like Google though. Just as security should be lived and breathed by every developer, you still need some experts to consult when things get gnarly, light the way when you need many years of study to understand the concepts, and spot things that laypeople would miss. The large language models Timnit was studying are a great example of this; people like her were (and are) needed to help the engineers understand the breadth and scope of the issues. Everyone in the org having their hearts in the right place doesn't replace expertise.
  - aabhay 6y ago
    I think the article is taking the stance that ethics should be a concern at the point of development, and those that create these large language models and those that use them should be accountable. Right now, those groups are not accountable, so instead a separate group of people is asked to take responsibility. This is where AI Ethics as a field has ended up, and in my opinion, stalled.
- madhadron 6y ago
  If we look at biology and medicine, there's both. The NIH requires everyone funded on their training grants to be given instruction in basic bioethics, and at the same time there is a profession of bioethics that is involved in grant review and oversight committees because a lot of cases aren't simple and covered by the basics. Bioethics enters the picture from regulation rather the way independent financial auditing does.
jedimastert 6y ago
> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. I mean, the only way to fix bad stuff is to find it?
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  Sure, but who is going to have a fair look? Someone who is employed by the company or someone who is independent? VW faked their emissions - EPA uncovered it. Google is harming people with bad AI models - Google is uncovering it? This works if the company is actually interested in finding the mistakes (i.e. MS finding security bugs in Windows), but not if the findings threaten your business. MS has an interest in fixing security bugs, because it makes their product better. No big corp has an interest in fixing their ethics, it's usually bad for their profit margins.
  - dmatech 6y ago
    Actually it wasn't even the EPA that uncovered it. It was academia. Corporations and governments just don't have the curiosity built in to their culture that academia does.
jariel 6y ago
And what qualifies anyone to be an 'AI ethicist' anyhow? This is a heavy question - it's problematically like elevating an individuals personal moral position, with all their little trivial baggage to something more than it is. The challenge with these roles is very real: self awareness, objectivity, and processes for arriving at that are probably key. I suggest it would require a lot of engagement, feedback, possibly legal knowledge, reference etc.. AI credibility aside, the individuals chosen by Google previously were not remotely up for the job on a professional level, this was apparent from their public posture and even writing skills, and that's not slander, it's hard job. As the OP indicates, some degree of objectivity as well, which may be difficult from within the company. Finally, I would say it's entirely doubtful if AI requires it's own special branch of ethics. Everything Google does touches on ethical issues, and 'plain old search' much more so than perhaps anything else - certainly more than any of their core AI. It's a business and technology issue, not an AI issue. It just may require some insight from those familiar with the company. All of that said, Google may lose the 'PR cover' of having a woman or PoC in the driver's seat.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  While I don’t personally think her race or gender should matter, the new head of their AI ethics org is Marion Croak, so they’ll retain the PR cover you’re describing.
jonstewart 6y ago
No, Google should never have messed with their researchers’ publications; it’s always the coverup that becomes the story. Contrast Google Research with Microsoft Research, which enjoys a stellar reputation and independence.
- crumbshot 6y ago
  Exactly this. Indeed, looking at Timnit Gebru as an example of someone who worked at both, I'd be very surprised if her paper that was censored at Google would have had any issues in being published if she were still working for Microsoft. Despite the research being, by implication, critical of a growing market segment in Azure, regarding its environmental impact and so on.
- jonathanstrange 6y ago
  Absolutely, that's the only sane stance towards it. The original poster seems to imply that it's impossible to do sustainable ethical business because of conflicts of interests, but there are many ways to deal with such conflicts of interests without firing researchers or suppressing papers. This case was really just mismanagement by Google. They could have just as well taken those researchers seriously, allow them to investigate whether there is systemic discrimination and then try to correct it, as was the whole point of hiring them in the first place. AI ethics researchers all over the world are publishing articles about the dangers of serious discrimination by large language models. Not addressing this and firing researchers who were working on it on their behalf is not going to help Google in the long run at all.
- jariel 6y ago
  This is upside down. There is no reason for Google to pay researchers and to not have some ownership over the process or outcome in some manner, in fact, it's unreasonable to contemplate otherwise. Google was exceedingly gracious by sponsoring the work and having it make public in the first place. The demands made of the researchers in question were quite minor, and completely appropriate, and frankly immaterial to the thrust of concerns anyhow. To boot, accusations of 'racism' are vicious and repulsive. If researchers want to be completely independent in the terms they might expect in academia - that's entirely understandable - perfectly fine - but they'll have to find jobs elsewhere. Google has a Search Engine and bunch of other products, and to suggest that their major investment in research should entitle them to some kind of fair parameterize of the process is very reasonable. To remedy the situation, and an obvious failure on Google's part, they should spend some time thinking about where that line is drawn, and what kind of expectations should be in place. In retrospect, it seems like a management failure for there to have been any misunderstanding on that front. But the point is -> there is a line. Researchers that don't want to with those parameters can make the choice not to. That's why we have both private and publicly funded research.
pfortuny 6y ago
> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. In reality, if you want them to fulfill their true role, they are preventing you from producing wrong products (which should be good for the Company). But Google understood that as you say (which is not what I think but this is beside the point), and that was their mistake.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  That makes sense to pay someone to perform that function privately and internally. It’s been a disaster for Google to have that happen in public.
  - jariel 6y ago
    This is the most curious part: hiring those two individual researchers, who clearly didn't have an understanding of the nature of public communication, was incredibly naive and asking for disaster. There is no other outcome. It kind of implies a total lack of understanding of human nature on the part of those doing the hiring. "What were they thinking?" is the only thing that comes to mind. It's a very, very tricky thing to do to hire your own public critics, that has to be done very carefully and with a lot of parameters.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    I think you will find that hiring skilled researchers and telling them that they cannot say anything publicly is a hard row to hoe.
    - izacus 6y ago
      Apple seems to be doing that just fine and with huge success. They are exceedingly good at silencing every single employee to not speak about any kind of internal dissent or HR issues like this.
    - GreenWinters 6y ago
      Perhaps, but hiring skilled researchers who do not think they need to say whatever they want is probably not as hard. Importantly, Google offers great work conditions, access to their intellectual property and different evaluation criteria. Many prefer that and other benefits over the stresses of a proper academic career.
titzer 6y ago
> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. They hired them to control them. And it's a diversion to keep people thinking about the wrong things.
- Theizestooke 6y ago
  Yeah, it was a PR move.
- KvanteKat 6y ago
  Another useful (to Google) aspect of hiring an ethical AI team is also that is allows Google to shut down ethical concerns raised in other parts of its own organization by going "we agree that ethics is an important, but please focus on your own job", i.e. an internal AI team can act as a sort of "controlled opposition". The fact that the ethical AI team is now being undermined within the company after trying to do their job and making clear that they are not content to be relegated to such a role is pretty consistent with this motive.
  - titzer 6y ago
    Yes, and just to expand on what I meant with "thinking about the wrong things", they've got everyone thinking about killer robots and automated weapons systems and surveillance (by government entities). When in reality Google's AI is, and has long been, vastly deployed to understand human behavior for the express purpose of maximizing advertising revenue and modification of behavior through pervasive messaging, recommendations, addictive dark patterns, etc. They've basically built a completely automated real distortion system designed to trap people into spending their time staring at whatever the highest (fully automated) bidder thinks they should see. It's dystopian and all the local incentives are wrong now. They've got a crapton of money, computational power, and self-justification. The reality distortion field is powerful. We should be very wary.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
SavantIdiot 6y ago
Completely agree with independent auditing. If automotive safety had been deregulated, the body count would be orders of magnitude higher. This chart says it all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year#/media/File:US_traffic_deaths_per_VMT,_VMT,_per_capita,_and_total_annual_deaths.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... The regulation of automotive safety in the 60's/70's had a huge impact. > It makes no sense for them to hire their critics and then think they can stay independent. You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. Shit on your own products? So if I'm a good engineer and fix mistakes, I'm "shitting on my company's product?" There's this belief in this post that un-examined AI is some shiny golden award, and ethics researchers are tarnishing it. It's the other way around.
- Cederfjard 6y ago
  Does that not depend on your perspective? There might not be an alignment between what Google’s executives and shareholders want out of the company, and what an ethics researcher might consider ethical behavior.
  - SavantIdiot 6y ago
    > Does that not depend on your perspective? Well, it depends on your breadth of understanding of the issue. If you have a limited scope, it doesn't seem like a big problem. And it also assumes that we all agree on certain basic human rights. If we don't then yes, it is a matter of perspective. Read "Weapons of Math Destruction". It discusses how existing algorithms discriminate in the following case-studies: - courtroom sentencing (and recidivism prediction) - mortgage and loan rate determination - educator performance - job applications that use 3rd party screening tools The book looks at specific examples of where these black-box algorithms are deployed that have ruined people's lives with no accountability. The ethics concerns that are being raised were needed a decade ago, or more, but it is only getting worse with the ad-hoc deployment of this un-baked technology to almost every industry. I have to stress again that these black-box algorithms are ALREADY IN USE and cannot be subpoenaed by courts because it is considered intellectual property. So yes, it is urgent to crack open this technology because it is all too easily being sold without any investigation, accountability, or thought to the consequences. "Move fast and break things" doesn't work if it ruins peoples lives by landing them in jail, or pushing them into poverty. The book demonstrates this is not a what-if strawman, but reality.
sangnoir 6y ago
> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. Self regulation is preferable (to a private company) to industry-wide regulation, which in turn is preferable to government regulation. If you want to avoid government oversight, either have internal oversight with the appearance of independence. Alternatively, have an "independent" overseeing body for your industry (whose behavior you may still indirectly control via nominations, seats on boards, funding, etc). Having an actual independent body providing oversight, appointed and controlled by an arm of government body is the worst outcome, yet it is inevitable when lapses arise, and voters demand "something be done" and you failed to provide a veneer of oversight, like Google is doing here.
908B64B197 6y ago
> funded by government funds, maybe even additionally with an AI regulation fee Ahh, rent-seeking at it's finest. Do we really want to use the tax payer's money to fund this type of behaviors[0]? [0] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...
- astrange 6y ago
  It's good for Yann LeCun to quit Twitter if he's going to say silly things like "AI bias can always be fixed by collecting data" which is not true and not how his own employees fix issues - it's certainly not how the other FAANGs solve problems involving bias. Problems are perfectly capable of happening even if your data is the best it can be!
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    > he's going to say silly things like "AI bias can always be fixed by collecting data" Except he never said that. He pointed out one algorithm was lazily trained on a non-representative dataset and that it was, therefore, producing biased results.
    - astrange 6y ago
      The model was also new, so you can't be sure improving the data without doing anything else would fix it. You have to actually try it first.
caturopath 6y ago
> Google should have never started hiring ethical AI researchers. They should have hired AI researchers and made their stuff available to independent ethics researchers. If you're going to submit your work to an external, independent review board, it's even more important that you have internal people working to address related concerns.

madeofpalk 6y ago

> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. It's good to be critical of your own products to make them better. But you have to actually be willing to do that for it all to work.

evilpotatoes 6y ago
The criticism would need to be constructive to be useful, or at least specific enough to act on. Also, you can't go embarrassing the parent company, especially one as image-conscious as google.
- the_duke 6y ago
  Any kind of public criticism is embarrassing from a PR perspective. Either you accept that, or you don't. "Ethics researches" that can't publish public criticism , with minimal oversight restricted to preventing IP leaks, are a pointless exercise in fake responsibility posturing.
  - bitcurious 6y ago
    Agree to disagree. One of the main “enforcement arms” of ethics research is to say the unsaid things out loud. Saying them introduces legal liability onto the company in future lawsuits. I.e. “Google knew that X would result in Y and they still released X; they should pay for the damages of Y.” The PR side of ethics research barely matters in comparison.
    - minot 6y ago
      > Saying them introduces legal liability onto the company in future lawsuits. My first thought was ExxonMobil when I read this comment. > In July 1977, a senior scientist of Exxon James Black reported to the company's executives that there was a general scientific agreement at that time that the burning of fossil fuels was the most likely manner in which mankind was influencing global climate change. > According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, "The funding of academic research activity has provided the corporation legitimacy, while it actively funds ideological and advocacy organizations to conduct a disinformation campaign." Nothing has happened to Exxon Mobile. None of the executives are in prison as far as I know. You'd think the company would be bankrupt by now... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...
    - mcguire 6y ago
      Humanity has a fair history of introducing products that are later shown to have large externalized costs: tetraethyl lead, PVC, etc. I interpret your point to be that publicly investigating the harm of future products---by the only people who can do so---is a bad idea. What is the alternative? Regulation? (Gasp!) Perhaps we should start the disinformation campaigns before the products are developed. "If you are arrested on AI-provided evidence, you are guilty. Period."
  - jimbokun 6y ago
    Which is why it’s idiotic to hire people whose entire job is to create bad publicity for the company.
marcinzm 6y ago
Few (none?) companies would be happy to pay someone to be publicly and loudly critical of their products. Especially if it wasn't constructive criticism that they could act on.
jimbokun 6y ago
It’s a great resource to pay people to do that internally. It’s a complete disaster to hire people who see their job description as shitting on the company publicly, with no constructive proposals for improvement.
- nindalf 6y ago
  One of the criticisms in that paper was that training AI used a lot of electricity. That's technically true, but what's the proposal there? The power efficiency of hardware is already being increased.
  - clankyclanker 6y ago
    > what's the proposal there? That's what Google was afraid of: the alternative is to decide that the cost of the model isn't worth the effort (externalities < benefit) and to abandon it. Which might be the correct decision, but one that loses Google a lot of potential money.
    - nindalf 6y ago
      The paper didn't attempt to examine if the benefits of the model outweighed the costs. They calculated the total energy used and called it a day.
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        Correct. It left it up to the model creators to potentially evaluate those tradeoffs for future models.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      I find the conclusions ludicrous. Should we also abandon particle accelerators because they use too much electrity for ill-defined benefits? Really the claim is toxic academia style knife fighting for tenure at best.

vr46 6y ago

The last sentence here makes no sense - this is Google RESEARCH we’re talking about, and the issue is around the suppression of research, the sneaky modification of the papers by lawyers and then doubling down on the ensuing shitshow of recriminations, dirty-laundry-airing and anger of 2700 employees by firing people. Including the founder of the AI ethics unit. What’s their top priority? Optics? Or better AI? People doing research are not automatically critics, but it is their literal job in this area to ask the hard, hard questions, this is not Harry and Megan go Oprah, this is technology with far-reaching consequences.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
Well, Google says they didn't surpress research, but that the researchers didn't follow process. Now we are all having an argument - we wouldn't have that if the researchers were truly independent.
- andyxor 6y ago
  not just that, they fired a toxic employee who was bullying her colleagues on social media and even tried to bully her bosses by throwing ultimatums. This whole drama has nothing to do with neither AI nor ethics.

marshmallow_12 6y ago

- You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. They aren't really researching ethics. This is what i think is going on there. recycling an old comment. { AI Ethical research can never be an accurate representation of the majority of humanity - or even the majority of its users! If it can it is not sustainable for any long period of time. What about far more stable principles, such as murder and racism, you ask? They are prone to being overplayed or downplayed, are state executions murder, or justice? What if the victim/ hangman happens to be black? Why should it matter? Just ignore some issues? That's misleading by omission. It would be better to just admit "yes, we at Giant Tech know our ethics are bs, but we had to put something down or our machines won't work. Maybe we are not ready for advanced ai. Maybe there's a limit on what programmers can do. Yea. We know. turns out computers DO have limits. We'll have to find other ways to make money." "But why should we say that!" cry all the executives when this speech is proposed to them. "because it's true, and if we don't act now the company is screwed. And our clients will also get screwed" is the answer of the timid executive who first suggested this. "how will the truth help us?" respond all the execs in unison. "if we can keep up the lie for long enough, we shall all long be millionaires and retired before it implodes! We shall long be out of danger! who cares if some people lose money?" "Yes, but don't you feel bad for all the shareholders? And how can we possibly fool people for decades to come that our ai isn't bs?" Responds the poor executive weakly. "By creating a fake team and telling everyone they are ethics researchers" they say. "Really they are just pawns to help us earn more money. Fish get eaten by bigger fish you know?" "can you just help me change a few lines on my press statement?" Asks the first executive.}

jseliger 6y ago
It may also be that Google didn't realize the extent to which they were inviting some of the more organizationally destructive and divisive elements of modern politically correct culture into their organization: https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outsiders/ https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs.... It may be that we're going to see a trend towards "Leave politics and religion at the door."
- marshmallow_12 6y ago

aabhay 6y ago

Yup, exactly. This is also the stance taken in the book Lingua Franca: > Ethics in AI should not be so convoluted as to require a separate profession; ethics should be distributed across an organization, flowing through and between individuals so that conversations of design naturally arrive at ethical questions. More crucially, everyone should have the tools to speak up and suggest improvements, so that no one person or set of people hold the keys to building ethical technology. https://linguafranca.polytopal.ai/handbook/agency https://linguafranca.polytopal.ai/handbook/agency

StargazyPi 6y ago
That's a great resource (that links to even more great resources) - thanks for posting it. I disagree that professional ethicists aren't needed in an organisation like Google though. Just as security should be lived and breathed by every developer, you still need some experts to consult when things get gnarly, light the way when you need many years of study to understand the concepts, and spot things that laypeople would miss. The large language models Timnit was studying are a great example of this; people like her were (and are) needed to help the engineers understand the breadth and scope of the issues. Everyone in the org having their hearts in the right place doesn't replace expertise.
- aabhay 6y ago
  I think the article is taking the stance that ethics should be a concern at the point of development, and those that create these large language models and those that use them should be accountable. Right now, those groups are not accountable, so instead a separate group of people is asked to take responsibility. This is where AI Ethics as a field has ended up, and in my opinion, stalled.
madhadron 6y ago
If we look at biology and medicine, there's both. The NIH requires everyone funded on their training grants to be given instruction in basic bioethics, and at the same time there is a profession of bioethics that is involved in grant review and oversight committees because a lot of cases aren't simple and covered by the basics. Bioethics enters the picture from regulation rather the way independent financial auditing does.

jedimastert 6y ago

> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. I mean, the only way to fix bad stuff is to find it?

turbinerneiter 6y ago
Sure, but who is going to have a fair look? Someone who is employed by the company or someone who is independent? VW faked their emissions - EPA uncovered it. Google is harming people with bad AI models - Google is uncovering it? This works if the company is actually interested in finding the mistakes (i.e. MS finding security bugs in Windows), but not if the findings threaten your business. MS has an interest in fixing security bugs, because it makes their product better. No big corp has an interest in fixing their ethics, it's usually bad for their profit margins.
- dmatech 6y ago
  Actually it wasn't even the EPA that uncovered it. It was academia. Corporations and governments just don't have the curiosity built in to their culture that academia does.

jariel 6y ago

And what qualifies anyone to be an 'AI ethicist' anyhow? This is a heavy question - it's problematically like elevating an individuals personal moral position, with all their little trivial baggage to something more than it is. The challenge with these roles is very real: self awareness, objectivity, and processes for arriving at that are probably key. I suggest it would require a lot of engagement, feedback, possibly legal knowledge, reference etc.. AI credibility aside, the individuals chosen by Google previously were not remotely up for the job on a professional level, this was apparent from their public posture and even writing skills, and that's not slander, it's hard job. As the OP indicates, some degree of objectivity as well, which may be difficult from within the company. Finally, I would say it's entirely doubtful if AI requires it's own special branch of ethics. Everything Google does touches on ethical issues, and 'plain old search' much more so than perhaps anything else - certainly more than any of their core AI. It's a business and technology issue, not an AI issue. It just may require some insight from those familiar with the company. All of that said, Google may lose the 'PR cover' of having a woman or PoC in the driver's seat.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
While I don’t personally think her race or gender should matter, the new head of their AI ethics org is Marion Croak, so they’ll retain the PR cover you’re describing.

jonstewart 6y ago

No, Google should never have messed with their researchers’ publications; it’s always the coverup that becomes the story. Contrast Google Research with Microsoft Research, which enjoys a stellar reputation and independence.

crumbshot 6y ago
Exactly this. Indeed, looking at Timnit Gebru as an example of someone who worked at both, I'd be very surprised if her paper that was censored at Google would have had any issues in being published if she were still working for Microsoft. Despite the research being, by implication, critical of a growing market segment in Azure, regarding its environmental impact and so on.
jonathanstrange 6y ago
Absolutely, that's the only sane stance towards it. The original poster seems to imply that it's impossible to do sustainable ethical business because of conflicts of interests, but there are many ways to deal with such conflicts of interests without firing researchers or suppressing papers. This case was really just mismanagement by Google. They could have just as well taken those researchers seriously, allow them to investigate whether there is systemic discrimination and then try to correct it, as was the whole point of hiring them in the first place. AI ethics researchers all over the world are publishing articles about the dangers of serious discrimination by large language models. Not addressing this and firing researchers who were working on it on their behalf is not going to help Google in the long run at all.
jariel 6y ago
This is upside down. There is no reason for Google to pay researchers and to not have some ownership over the process or outcome in some manner, in fact, it's unreasonable to contemplate otherwise. Google was exceedingly gracious by sponsoring the work and having it make public in the first place. The demands made of the researchers in question were quite minor, and completely appropriate, and frankly immaterial to the thrust of concerns anyhow. To boot, accusations of 'racism' are vicious and repulsive. If researchers want to be completely independent in the terms they might expect in academia - that's entirely understandable - perfectly fine - but they'll have to find jobs elsewhere. Google has a Search Engine and bunch of other products, and to suggest that their major investment in research should entitle them to some kind of fair parameterize of the process is very reasonable. To remedy the situation, and an obvious failure on Google's part, they should spend some time thinking about where that line is drawn, and what kind of expectations should be in place. In retrospect, it seems like a management failure for there to have been any misunderstanding on that front. But the point is -> there is a line. Researchers that don't want to with those parameters can make the choice not to. That's why we have both private and publicly funded research.

pfortuny 6y ago

> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. In reality, if you want them to fulfill their true role, they are preventing you from producing wrong products (which should be good for the Company). But Google understood that as you say (which is not what I think but this is beside the point), and that was their mistake.

jimbokun 6y ago
That makes sense to pay someone to perform that function privately and internally. It’s been a disaster for Google to have that happen in public.
- jariel 6y ago
  This is the most curious part: hiring those two individual researchers, who clearly didn't have an understanding of the nature of public communication, was incredibly naive and asking for disaster. There is no other outcome. It kind of implies a total lack of understanding of human nature on the part of those doing the hiring. "What were they thinking?" is the only thing that comes to mind. It's a very, very tricky thing to do to hire your own public critics, that has to be done very carefully and with a lot of parameters.
- mcguire 6y ago
  I think you will find that hiring skilled researchers and telling them that they cannot say anything publicly is a hard row to hoe.
  - izacus 6y ago
    Apple seems to be doing that just fine and with huge success. They are exceedingly good at silencing every single employee to not speak about any kind of internal dissent or HR issues like this.
  - GreenWinters 6y ago
    Perhaps, but hiring skilled researchers who do not think they need to say whatever they want is probably not as hard. Importantly, Google offers great work conditions, access to their intellectual property and different evaluation criteria. Many prefer that and other benefits over the stresses of a proper academic career.

titzer 6y ago

> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. They hired them to control them. And it's a diversion to keep people thinking about the wrong things.

Theizestooke 6y ago
Yeah, it was a PR move.
KvanteKat 6y ago
Another useful (to Google) aspect of hiring an ethical AI team is also that is allows Google to shut down ethical concerns raised in other parts of its own organization by going "we agree that ethics is an important, but please focus on your own job", i.e. an internal AI team can act as a sort of "controlled opposition". The fact that the ethical AI team is now being undermined within the company after trying to do their job and making clear that they are not content to be relegated to such a role is pretty consistent with this motive.
- titzer 6y ago
  Yes, and just to expand on what I meant with "thinking about the wrong things", they've got everyone thinking about killer robots and automated weapons systems and surveillance (by government entities). When in reality Google's AI is, and has long been, vastly deployed to understand human behavior for the express purpose of maximizing advertising revenue and modification of behavior through pervasive messaging, recommendations, addictive dark patterns, etc. They've basically built a completely automated real distortion system designed to trap people into spending their time staring at whatever the highest (fully automated) bidder thinks they should see. It's dystopian and all the local incentives are wrong now. They've got a crapton of money, computational power, and self-justification. The reality distortion field is powerful. We should be very wary.

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SavantIdiot 6y ago

Completely agree with independent auditing. If automotive safety had been deregulated, the body count would be orders of magnitude higher. This chart says it all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year#/media/File:US_traffic_deaths_per_VMT,_VMT,_per_capita,_and_total_annual_deaths.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... The regulation of automotive safety in the 60's/70's had a huge impact. > It makes no sense for them to hire their critics and then think they can stay independent. You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. Shit on your own products? So if I'm a good engineer and fix mistakes, I'm "shitting on my company's product?" There's this belief in this post that un-examined AI is some shiny golden award, and ethics researchers are tarnishing it. It's the other way around.

Cederfjard 6y ago
Does that not depend on your perspective? There might not be an alignment between what Google’s executives and shareholders want out of the company, and what an ethics researcher might consider ethical behavior.
- SavantIdiot 6y ago
  > Does that not depend on your perspective? Well, it depends on your breadth of understanding of the issue. If you have a limited scope, it doesn't seem like a big problem. And it also assumes that we all agree on certain basic human rights. If we don't then yes, it is a matter of perspective. Read "Weapons of Math Destruction". It discusses how existing algorithms discriminate in the following case-studies: - courtroom sentencing (and recidivism prediction) - mortgage and loan rate determination - educator performance - job applications that use 3rd party screening tools The book looks at specific examples of where these black-box algorithms are deployed that have ruined people's lives with no accountability. The ethics concerns that are being raised were needed a decade ago, or more, but it is only getting worse with the ad-hoc deployment of this un-baked technology to almost every industry. I have to stress again that these black-box algorithms are ALREADY IN USE and cannot be subpoenaed by courts because it is considered intellectual property. So yes, it is urgent to crack open this technology because it is all too easily being sold without any investigation, accountability, or thought to the consequences. "Move fast and break things" doesn't work if it ruins peoples lives by landing them in jail, or pushing them into poverty. The book demonstrates this is not a what-if strawman, but reality.

sangnoir 6y ago

> You are basically paying people to shit on your own products. Makes no sense. Self regulation is preferable (to a private company) to industry-wide regulation, which in turn is preferable to government regulation. If you want to avoid government oversight, either have internal oversight with the appearance of independence. Alternatively, have an "independent" overseeing body for your industry (whose behavior you may still indirectly control via nominations, seats on boards, funding, etc). Having an actual independent body providing oversight, appointed and controlled by an arm of government body is the worst outcome, yet it is inevitable when lapses arise, and voters demand "something be done" and you failed to provide a veneer of oversight, like Google is doing here.

908B64B197 6y ago

> funded by government funds, maybe even additionally with an AI regulation fee Ahh, rent-seeking at it's finest. Do we really want to use the tax payer's money to fund this type of behaviors[0]? [0] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...

astrange 6y ago
It's good for Yann LeCun to quit Twitter if he's going to say silly things like "AI bias can always be fixed by collecting data" which is not true and not how his own employees fix issues - it's certainly not how the other FAANGs solve problems involving bias. Problems are perfectly capable of happening even if your data is the best it can be!
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > he's going to say silly things like "AI bias can always be fixed by collecting data" Except he never said that. He pointed out one algorithm was lazily trained on a non-representative dataset and that it was, therefore, producing biased results.
  - astrange 6y ago
    The model was also new, so you can't be sure improving the data without doing anything else would fix it. You have to actually try it first.

caturopath 6y ago

> Google should have never started hiring ethical AI researchers. They should have hired AI researchers and made their stuff available to independent ethics researchers. If you're going to submit your work to an external, independent review board, it's even more important that you have internal people working to address related concerns.