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I have huge respect for developers at Yandex. It's kind of sad that achievements like these are tainted by the fact that they come from Russia (and I speak as a
by egorfine 4y ago
I have huge respect for developers at Yandex. It's kind of sad that achievements like these are tainted by the fact that they come from Russia (and I speak as a Ukrainian). I wonder if the permissive license is able to mitigate that.
- f6v 4y agoThe achievements aren’t in any way tainted by their nationality, citizenship, sex, sexual orientation, age, etc.
- geek_at 4y agothe age old question if the art should be linked or disconnected from the artist
- rapnie 4y agoand if technology is neutral.
- somenameforme 4y agoThis is nothing like that, because the question is not one of their own personal actions - but of their nationality or ethnicity. That, until about 4 months ago, would have been widely acknowledged as racism. The difference between holding values, and holding values when convenient rather sums up the entirety of human history in one phrase.
- trasz 4y agoYeah, it's certainly about ethnicity, not at all about being controlled by a government which is in the process of perpetrating genocide.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y agoI'm ethnically Russian (mostly), although I've never been to that country and have less influence on their foreign policy than your average European (who at least has some say in how his own country behaves towards Russia — and we've seen how well they managed that). I don't know how this would translate to the real world if I lived in "the West", but from what I'm seeing on the internet for the past few months, it definitely is about ethnicity. I've been called many things and blamed for everything bad that has happened since 1945, and not many seem to care that half of Putin's army consists of people of Asian and Caucasian ethnicities, and there are many Russians in the Ukrainian army. If you go to places like r/worldnews, there are open calls for violence that have strong fascist overtones, and those seem to be getting more popular. Can't say the same about HN, it's one of the few places that seems to have kept its sanity (for now?)
- trasz 4y agoHow is your Russian ethnicity different from average Ukrainian? But yes, there is, sadly, some discrimination. It's got nothing to do with ethnicity though; it's the same thing that happened to ordinary Germans in 1939-1945, and for the same reasons.
- toyg 4y agoWell... I'm sorry if I reach for the reductio at Hitlerum, but any achievements Nazi scientists might have reached in concentration camps are definitely tainted. Similarly, achievements in the field of online consumer analysis in a country where consumer-privacy protections are nonexistent, surely should be considered tainted...?
- amelius 4y agoI suppose the question should be: did the malevolence help in reaching the results?
- p1anecrazy 4y agoWernher von Braun would disagree
- kamray23 4y agoThey are and we use them all the same. Rockets fly almost every week now, jet engines are the most common form of propulsion, tons of medicine forcibly tested on innocent people is on the market, and to pass up any of that technology would be pure idiocy.
- dTal 4y ago>tons of medicine forcibly tested on innocent people is on the market What medicine?
- FpUser 4y agoThat is why the US imported Nazi scientists in bulk to work in their labs. Starting with Wernher von Braun who had become the heart of the US space program. Soviets did the same at the time. If you are so conscious about consuming tainted fruits the only way to escape is to be living on some deserted island catching your own food.
- skrebbel 4y agoAnd Yandex's AI work got helped by the Russian invasion of Ukraine how, exactly? Did they train the bots on Ukrainian captives first?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- egorfine 4y agoSome people see it differently.
- danuker 4y agoComing from Russia doesn't mean you agree with government policy. If you saw people get arrested as soon as they start protesting, what would you do?
- f6v 4y agoThey might as well agree with it. Or agree with some of it. It just strikes me how everyone wants to put everyone else into these well-defined black-and-white boxes. I get that it’s simpler, but it’s often at odds with reality.
- FpUser 4y ago>"It just strikes me how everyone ..." Because most of those "everyone's" are not facing the choices themselves and are basically keyboard warriors. Let's see what they say when they'll be asked to sacrifice their own well being to be on a "high moral ground".
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y agoI think we're already seeing that in recent French elections. I have a feeling this is only the beginning. As a relatively neutral party in all of this whose country hasn't tainted itself (but who nevertheless spent all my live under a similar autocracy), I can't help but shake my head at keyboard revolutionaries who definitely would have overthrown the regime, if only they lived in Russia. You just have no freaking idea what you're talking about. Guard your democracy as best you can so you don't have to find out.
- danuker 4y ago> Guard your democracy as best you can If you look at Snowden and Assange, that ship has sailed.
- artemonster 4y agoBut as a company, they do. They are filtering alternative media from their search.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agohttps://github.com/yandex/YaLM-100B/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/yandex/YaLM-100B/blob/main/LICENSE apache license >The model is published under the Apache 2.0 license that permits both research and commercial use you should be fine
- pfortuny 4y agoThe achievements cannot be tainted. Kolmogorov complexity is (I hope) untainted. Also, Hilbert’s problems are not untainted (and he never flew Nazi Germany!).
- niek_pas 4y agoAre American developers’ achievement tainted by the fact they come from the United States?
- MrBuddyCasino 4y agoUnderrated comment, considering the history of NATO expansion, color revolutions and the hundreds of thousands killed in pursuit of reckless ideological overt or covert warfare.
- bloqs 4y agoYikes
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoUnsure what this comment means.
- toyg 4y agoSome of them, like the invasive analysis tools that exploit the Patriot Act, yes for sure.
- kamray23 4y agoOften, yes. In many places we're even wary of using US-based services at all. The EU has been having a bit of a back and forth with the US and many companies because EU law prohibits foreign states gaining access to personal information whereas US law requires foreign personal information transfers to CC the NSA on request. There's some big legislative deadlocks where American companies simply cannot operate fully in countries other than the US because the US laws require wild violations of basic rights to privacy of anyone who isn't a US citizen. Lots of things have to be cleared for backdoors, Intel and AMD are scary with their built-in ME and whatever AMD had, I can't exactly remember, proprietary hardware in general is very scary outside the US due to surveillance and possible backdoors, it's kind of weird. Same goes for China, though they don't surveil foreigners exactly as hard, at least here they don't. It's not exactly an ideal situation and I think there should be agreements done internationally on stuff like this to keep the US and China out of our devices or allowing them to kindly fuck off entirely. Not exactly the same kind of taint though, your products aren't as much morally tainted as they are simply dangerous to use, like little telescreens you have to carry around.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoWhat percentage of American inventions and scientific developments post WW2 were led or influenced by former Nazi scientists?
- Svoka 4y agoProbably about same as share as of USSR's. They just were open about it. Also, crucial word here is "former". Like, there is a big difference between being of a former fascist state, and carrying on ongoing genocide.