6 ms·

> 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

> 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.

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.