Dear sbuk, After the cold war, the military cut off most of its funding to AI research, resulting in the AI winter. Without that source of funding, we have to

Dear sbuk, After the cold war, the military cut off most of its funding to AI research, resulting in the AI winter. Without that source of funding, we have to look for the next best source, which is big corporations. Google is one of the best examples of such a corporation because they deliver AI services to billions of users every day. Now is google a "paragon of virtue"? Hell no, nor is any institution in capitalism for that matter, however, we should still recognise _allies of virtue_ and in a way I would say that Google is one such example, not only through their support of AI but also through their support of software freedom. For example, the Android project, lead by Google is an essential part of the free software movement and really the good option on mobile devices. And well Anrdoid 3.0 isn't entirely free, Replicant largely fixes that, and Anrdoid 4.0 largely resolves any of these issues. Apple iOS, on the other hand, isn't even comparable, because it is full of DRM malfeatures. The workers at Xerox PARC stole those same ideas from people like Engelbart and Sutherland, at the very least Apple paid for them. The workers at Xerox PARC never "stole" anything, they hired lots of people from the nearby SRI organisation which first released most of the features of the GUI during the mother of all demos. just like Apple and Microsoft are. Before, Microsoft and Apple, the GUI was essentially the exclusive business of a few private individuals, and the "contribution" of Microsoft and Apple was to make it into a tool of screwing over millions of people. The thing they "contributed" to is their bank account, not technology. The offer their services for free for the purpose of gathering data about you to sell to the highest bidder. Then don't provide Google's services with data you don't want them to have. That's pretty simple. At least Google isn't selling stupid DRM ridden devices like Apple is. like the opinion piece that you link to What is your objection to that piece?