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The concern trolling and gatekeeping about social justice issues coming from the so-called "ethicists" in the AI peanut gallery has been utterly ridiculous. Goo

The concern trolling and gatekeeping about social justice issues coming from the so-called "ethicists" in the AI peanut gallery has been utterly ridiculous. Google claims they don't want to release Imagen because it lacks what can only be called "latent space affirmative action". Stability or someone like it will valiantly release this technology, again and there will be absolutely no harm to anyone. Stop being so totally silly Google, OpenAI, et. al. - it's especially disingenuous because the real reason you don't want to release these things is that you can't be bothered to share and would rather keep/monetize the IP. Which is ok -- but at least be honest.

benreesman 4y ago
I agree basically completely, but there’s now a cottage industry of AI Ethics professionals whose real job is to provide a smoke screen for the “cake and eat it too” that the big shops want on this kit: peer review and open source contributions and an academic atmosphere when it suits them, proprietary when it doesn’t. Those folks are a lobby now. The thing about owning the data sets and the huge TPU/A100 clusters is that the “publish the papers” model strictly serves them: no one can implement their models, they can implement everyone else’s.
- dannyw 4y ago
  Just because there are professionals doesn't mean we have to respect their arguments. There are people who get paid to be antivaxxers, doesn't mean we have to listen to them. "What have you done this week?"
- nperez 4y ago
  This thread is cathartic. I've been feeling uncomfortable with the level of control being sought over the usage of these tools for a while, but didn't want to ruffle the wrong feathers while just getting into AI as a hobby. I think there will be a pretty short window in which all of this hand-waving will be taken seriously. Not because AI won't be used for terrible things (I'm sure it already is) but because consumer hardware can already be used to build a dataset and train a model, and eventually there will come a realization - it doesn't matter how ethicists want "the general public" to use AI. The general public is fully capable of figuring out on their own how to do whatever they feel like doing. It's like a compiler or a hammer or a car, all of which can be used for positive or negative purposes. I do understand the fear of being sued or targeted in the media over misuse, though. The person misusing technology should (obviously imo) be held responsible for that, but since it's new tech, the tech will be taking the blame for the first really controversial cases of disinfo and/or harassment that utilize it.
  - fny 4y ago
    > it doesn't matter how ethicists want "the general public" to use AI Something tells me these pricks will end up arguing for a reversion to thin-client compute. It is in their financial interest too after all.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      Are you referring to chromebooks?
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      You mean like the apps are all running on a server and we only have a client used to… browse them?
      - CuriouslyC 4y ago
        Except that web apps have become pretty thick, with most of the computation going on in the browser in many cases.
    - cheschire 4y ago
      7 hours after you posted this, the top article on HN is about how cloud desktops aren’t that great, and the comments in there are predominantly supportive of that sentiment. Funny coincidence!
    - pdntspa 4y ago
      Reversion... we're already there! The only people using their computers to compute something more than a web browser are creatives and power users
  - Roark66 4y ago
    Exactly. Probably they already started lobbying against selling high end cheap GPUs to the public. No doubt ether going proof of stake is a huge blow to their agenda. They can't claim all those GPUs are just wasting energy for crypto mining. Now they have to come up with different arguments. I can already see it. Just think of all the energy wasted training AI at home! I can imagine police drones with IR sensors scanning the cities for the heat signatures of illegal AI "farms". Talking seriously, however they try to spin it, advanced AI (same as every other big scientific/engineering achievement) will be predominantly good. So let's say there is time when AI can create convincing videos of people engaging in various compromising "activities". When this becomes widespread it will give plausible deniability to any potential victim of such attack(with real or deep faked materials) . In a world where any compromising video or picture can be made with anyone, the value of such materials for wannabee blackmailer diminishes rapidly. However, in a world where there is only few entities that can produce such materials and they do so sparingly those entities get a tool that gives them huge power (especially in democracies where popular opinion decides who governs).
atty 4y ago
There is a clear risk from these sorts of models as they get better - I mean recreating specific individuals’ likenesses in compromising images (or even worse, video). We’re not at that point yet, but these things are getting better fast, so it’s only a matter of time. The problem is that there’s no way to mitigate those risks except to keep the model behind an inference-only API, or not release it at all - as soon as the model is open sourced then fine-tuning the model can introduce whatever behavior you want. Holding the models back is virtue signaling at best and actively harmful at worst, because it draws attention from individuals who will take it as a challenge to find ways to misuse them, and cuts businesses and the open source community off from models that would otherwise be very useful to them, that they could help to improve. I’m concerned this is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy, where more companies will start to do the same thing, primarily because it’s what everyone else is doing.
- carlosdp 4y ago
  > There is a clear risk from these sorts of models as they get better - I mean recreating specific individuals’ likenesses in compromising images (or even worse, video). This has been possible without AI for a very very long time now (just open photoshop, etc). It barely ever happens, and society hasn't collapsed. I keep seeing this argument come up and it baffles me that informed technologists take it seriously, as if it were impossible to convincingly manipulate images before DALL-E came around.
  - atty 4y ago
    There is a difference in ease of use. I could never use photoshop to fake something like that even if I wanted to. Further, we have seen harm come from some of this already, there’s a pretty big online community that uses deepfakes to put people in situations they would rather not be in, the most obvious being porn.
    - carlosdp 4y ago
      > There is a difference in ease of use. I could never use photoshop to fake something like that even if I wanted to. You couldn't, but basically any VFX shop easily could. Point is, it doesn't make anything possible that wasn't already possible, it just makes it more accessible. That's an inevitability with technology, as time goes on. The counter is not to try and suppress it, that has never worked and never will.
fassssst 4y ago
Google is a bigger lawsuit target since they have more $, probably simple as that. I’m not a lawyer but I’m sure there will be many copyright challenges.
capitalsigma 4y ago
Wrongfully or not, people blame Facebook for inflammatory content posted by humans on their platform. How much worse would it be if that content was generated with FB-trained models?
- dannyw 4y ago
  People blame Facebook for their intentional, and continued choice to use algorithms that amplify and surface inflammatory content.
  - capitalsigma 4y ago
    I think it's a hard problem and I'm not sure what the right solution is; clearly extremism is a problem but I can't say I'm 100% happy with Facebook being the final judge of Truth. Regardless, though, it is unambiguous that FB's role in "making" problematic UGC is much less direct than Google's role in making Imagen outputs.
  - _joel 4y ago
    It's amazing isn't, how much crap can get spouted on the internet nowadays
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Facebook is a recommendation engine. The problem isn't so much the content, its that facebook chooses to show it to people who did not actively seek it out. You never see people complain at Chrome for showing the content or nginx for hosting it. Recommendation engines are more responsible than basic infrastructure.
  - capitalsigma 4y ago
    So you would say that if FB fails to censor a video titled "vaccines cause autism" that drives engagement, they are more morally culpable for the content than if Google spends TPU cycles rendering the Imagen prompt input: "detailed video about why vaccines cause autism, scientific, realistic, in the style of a public health announcement" ?
johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
There is not ehtical concern. Google will shut it down regardless.
infoseek12 4y ago
Google has done incredible work on basic machine learning research that has enabled other individuals and organizations to do amazing things. In terms of actually implementing new machine learning technology, they've pretty much hobbled themselves to the point of irrelevance. In some ways, it may be for the best that they've ensured that the future of machine learning will be written primarily by those who hold opposing views.
- alphabetting 4y ago
  My sense has been that Google and Deepmind ML has been pretty ingrained across the board in Google services. If they're still producing the the most advanced AI research, I don't see why that wouldn't be introduced into future products as well.
  - infoseek12 4y ago
    I'm sure machine learning has already been introduced in one way or another in almost all of Google's services. But the implementations are mostly in the backend and enhancements like better recommendations that don't jump out as incredible leaps in artificial intelligence. They are almost exclusively incremental rather than radical innovations, quantitative and not qualitative improvements. In terms of machine learning technology that introduces truly novel innovations Google's product portfolio is notable barren. For instance the incredible powerful potential for image generation these new diffusion models open up, who's models will the world use to explore the potential and start using this technology? Google's model with the intense, though imperfect, effort that goes into addressing questions of bias and abuse? Or the model bankrolled by an ex hedge fund manager who probably put a bit less thought into addressing these questions?
    - alphabetting 4y ago
      Distribution is key. I've used some mind blowing betas from AI LLM startups recently who just put disclaimers on potential content issues. They are amazing and don't get a ton of use. The fact Google has seemingly the best product (just not releasing until they're ready) and over 3 billion users makes me think getting the world to use won't be an issue.
jquery 4y ago
You call it "concern trolling", I call it responsible research. It's not "social justice" to be concerned about the ability of any entity to make propaganda videos for virtually free. "Ok Google, produce a CDC-type public information video about how vaccines cause autism and disability". Not that I would have a complaint if social justice was the sole thing keeping it from being released. Facebook managed to cause genocides by being careless.
- colordrops 4y ago
  That would make sense if Google were somehow in a deserved position of authority to decide who is allowed access and what it's used for, rather than an advertising company with a heavily skewed bias that doesn't necessarily take the public good into account.
- Guid_NewGuid 4y ago
  I agree with you and was saddened to see such a comment rise to the top. I don't hold that GPs opinion is wrong, in fact I have no firm views yet on the AI and would generally lean towards stuff being made available even when harmful. But the idea that people in the field of AI Ethics are all some woke SJW cabal designed to keep Google powerful is for the birds. Like all industry adjacent fields I'm sure there's some corporate capture of research in the field, but maybe, engaging with things in good faith, there are ethical questions about a powerful new technology that can replicate biases in its training data at unprecedented speed and quality?
ehsankia 4y ago
Ironically nearly all ML demos like Stable Diffusion are setup and run for free on Google's Colab, so to claim they don't want to help the field is a little silly.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Stable diffusion can run anywhere
  - ehsankia 4y ago
    I didn't set it can't, I said the majority of people who have limited skill set with ML and troubleshooting it end up using the Colab version since it's much more straightforward and easy for average people to get started with. And that's for all ML stuff, Colab has lead to a huge democratization of ML, with notebooks setups for basically any cool demo you see out there.
- waffletower 4y ago
  Stable Diffusion is severely limited in the memory constrained Google Colab context.
thweriuo234234 4y ago
Imaginably, if the model produced sufficient propaganda against Hindus, the model would be feted for its social-justice creds.
macrolocal 4y ago
Scrappy startups soak up all the liability; Google retains its technical edge and earns some goodwill.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  good will? are we talking about the same Google?
  - macrolocal 4y ago
    Yes, Google has billions in goodwill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting) https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NASDAQ/Company/Alphabet-Inc/Analysis/Goodwill-and-Intangible-Assets https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NASDAQ/Company/Alphabet-In... Looks like typical MBA craft to me.
westhom 4y ago
I always read statements like “sorry we can’t release this ground breaking technology to the public, you simply can’t handle its power and repercussions” as the AI industry low key flex.
mrinterweb 4y ago
It is probably more of a liability concern where Google doesn't want a headline starting with: "Google created a video of ____ (horrific thing)"
theptip 4y ago
I don’t know about this take. Remember all of the shitstorms that the NYT et. al. kicked up over biased/racist/sexist AI? Remember Tay? I think if you are Google, you are terrified of the bad PR from someone generating something questionable. And that bad article is inevitable if you open up these models. (See, pornpen.ai being released approximately five minutes after StableDiffusion. Imagine the press if that was built from the mode Google published.) An open source community is a diffuse target, so the NYT won’t go after them as quickly, and let's be honest, their axe to grind is with big tech, not a bunch of AI hackers.
- i_like_apis 4y ago
  It’s better for them to not say anything about it when they don’t release the model. This is what Meta has done for the same technology and I respect that. They don’t imply any ridiculous idea that such models should or even can be “racially balanced”. But if they want to cover their butts from the possibility of silly controversy, I think that’s cowardly and unnecessary, but at least they could not go out of their way to imply that such controversy should be taken seriously.
make3 4y ago
I think it's actually about brand risk
mola 4y ago
1. How do you know there will be no harm or is no harm? These issues are not manifesting in a timeline of a few weeks. 2. Why do you think the ethical reasoning is disengenious in Google's case? Even in OpenAI case it could be that originally the ethicist won some battles where business ppl eventually prevailed. 3. Why do you use quotes around a something which is your original phrasing? That's pretty disengenious. 4. What's wrong with affirmative action ? It's easy to argue that it has both utilitarian and other moral adventages. I won't claim it is always warranted or the right thing to do, but it definitely not an obvious consensual evil.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  Affirmative action (like google’s moral imperatives here) are fairly unpopular, so many view their actions as a kind of encroaching cultural imperialism. When Google talks about “safety” it means enforcing a very specific set of beliefs that frankly a large majority of people disagree with.* It isn’t impermissible for Google to do this, but nobody has to like it, or agree with it. *for instance, affirmative action is disapproved of by 70-80% of Americans and couldn’t win on a ballot in California in 2020 which is pretty exceptional.
- i_like_apis 4y ago
  It not only isn’t technically feasible, it also isn’t rational, or even ethical to be portraying a warped version of the world. What they want is for results of “software engineer” to be equally likely to show black females. This is not fair to Eskimos and Aboriginals. And what about the mentally handicapped? Is it not unfair that people with Downs Syndrome are not Wall Street stock brokers? How are you going to find all of these “affluent” categories and claim to be able to balance them? And are you going to claim racism again when to ask for prison inmates and you don’t find any Asians? Should you start putting latent space Asians in latent space prisons? Because this is a main harp of the social justice “ethicists” - that if you ask these models for “gang member” you get “People Of Color!!” … as if they simply don’t understand the statistics of situation. How would you even “solve” that? Should you decide when and where certain ethnic groups should be taken down a peg? Latent space affirmative action is technically absurd, an completely ironic as “ethical” behavior.
stared 4y ago
It is not a matter of ethics. Do you think it is the priority for such corporations? It is a matter of PR. It takes a single "problematic" generated content to be framed as "Google is sexist/racist/supports animal abuse", etc. Statements related to ethics help in a few ways: holding secrets ("oh, we would love to share the models, but we cannot"), protecting against backslash (PR-wise, legal-wise), and PR on its own ("we are that ethical - see! it is even in our mission statement").
raxxorraxor 4y ago
This was never about ethics, this was only about control. Of language, behavior and they need these stories for plausible deniability. They are advertisers and know what they are doing.

benreesman 4y ago

I agree basically completely, but there’s now a cottage industry of AI Ethics professionals whose real job is to provide a smoke screen for the “cake and eat it too” that the big shops want on this kit: peer review and open source contributions and an academic atmosphere when it suits them, proprietary when it doesn’t. Those folks are a lobby now. The thing about owning the data sets and the huge TPU/A100 clusters is that the “publish the papers” model strictly serves them: no one can implement their models, they can implement everyone else’s.

dannyw 4y ago
Just because there are professionals doesn't mean we have to respect their arguments. There are people who get paid to be antivaxxers, doesn't mean we have to listen to them. "What have you done this week?"
nperez 4y ago
This thread is cathartic. I've been feeling uncomfortable with the level of control being sought over the usage of these tools for a while, but didn't want to ruffle the wrong feathers while just getting into AI as a hobby. I think there will be a pretty short window in which all of this hand-waving will be taken seriously. Not because AI won't be used for terrible things (I'm sure it already is) but because consumer hardware can already be used to build a dataset and train a model, and eventually there will come a realization - it doesn't matter how ethicists want "the general public" to use AI. The general public is fully capable of figuring out on their own how to do whatever they feel like doing. It's like a compiler or a hammer or a car, all of which can be used for positive or negative purposes. I do understand the fear of being sued or targeted in the media over misuse, though. The person misusing technology should (obviously imo) be held responsible for that, but since it's new tech, the tech will be taking the blame for the first really controversial cases of disinfo and/or harassment that utilize it.
- fny 4y ago
  > it doesn't matter how ethicists want "the general public" to use AI Something tells me these pricks will end up arguing for a reversion to thin-client compute. It is in their financial interest too after all.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Are you referring to chromebooks?
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    You mean like the apps are all running on a server and we only have a client used to… browse them?
    - CuriouslyC 4y ago
      Except that web apps have become pretty thick, with most of the computation going on in the browser in many cases.
  - cheschire 4y ago
    7 hours after you posted this, the top article on HN is about how cloud desktops aren’t that great, and the comments in there are predominantly supportive of that sentiment. Funny coincidence!
  - pdntspa 4y ago
    Reversion... we're already there! The only people using their computers to compute something more than a web browser are creatives and power users
- Roark66 4y ago
  Exactly. Probably they already started lobbying against selling high end cheap GPUs to the public. No doubt ether going proof of stake is a huge blow to their agenda. They can't claim all those GPUs are just wasting energy for crypto mining. Now they have to come up with different arguments. I can already see it. Just think of all the energy wasted training AI at home! I can imagine police drones with IR sensors scanning the cities for the heat signatures of illegal AI "farms". Talking seriously, however they try to spin it, advanced AI (same as every other big scientific/engineering achievement) will be predominantly good. So let's say there is time when AI can create convincing videos of people engaging in various compromising "activities". When this becomes widespread it will give plausible deniability to any potential victim of such attack(with real or deep faked materials) . In a world where any compromising video or picture can be made with anyone, the value of such materials for wannabee blackmailer diminishes rapidly. However, in a world where there is only few entities that can produce such materials and they do so sparingly those entities get a tool that gives them huge power (especially in democracies where popular opinion decides who governs).

atty 4y ago

There is a clear risk from these sorts of models as they get better - I mean recreating specific individuals’ likenesses in compromising images (or even worse, video). We’re not at that point yet, but these things are getting better fast, so it’s only a matter of time. The problem is that there’s no way to mitigate those risks except to keep the model behind an inference-only API, or not release it at all - as soon as the model is open sourced then fine-tuning the model can introduce whatever behavior you want. Holding the models back is virtue signaling at best and actively harmful at worst, because it draws attention from individuals who will take it as a challenge to find ways to misuse them, and cuts businesses and the open source community off from models that would otherwise be very useful to them, that they could help to improve. I’m concerned this is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy, where more companies will start to do the same thing, primarily because it’s what everyone else is doing.

carlosdp 4y ago
> There is a clear risk from these sorts of models as they get better - I mean recreating specific individuals’ likenesses in compromising images (or even worse, video). This has been possible without AI for a very very long time now (just open photoshop, etc). It barely ever happens, and society hasn't collapsed. I keep seeing this argument come up and it baffles me that informed technologists take it seriously, as if it were impossible to convincingly manipulate images before DALL-E came around.
- atty 4y ago
  There is a difference in ease of use. I could never use photoshop to fake something like that even if I wanted to. Further, we have seen harm come from some of this already, there’s a pretty big online community that uses deepfakes to put people in situations they would rather not be in, the most obvious being porn.
  - carlosdp 4y ago
    > There is a difference in ease of use. I could never use photoshop to fake something like that even if I wanted to. You couldn't, but basically any VFX shop easily could. Point is, it doesn't make anything possible that wasn't already possible, it just makes it more accessible. That's an inevitability with technology, as time goes on. The counter is not to try and suppress it, that has never worked and never will.

fassssst 4y ago

Google is a bigger lawsuit target since they have more $, probably simple as that. I’m not a lawyer but I’m sure there will be many copyright challenges.

capitalsigma 4y ago

Wrongfully or not, people blame Facebook for inflammatory content posted by humans on their platform. How much worse would it be if that content was generated with FB-trained models?

dannyw 4y ago
People blame Facebook for their intentional, and continued choice to use algorithms that amplify and surface inflammatory content.
- capitalsigma 4y ago
  I think it's a hard problem and I'm not sure what the right solution is; clearly extremism is a problem but I can't say I'm 100% happy with Facebook being the final judge of Truth. Regardless, though, it is unambiguous that FB's role in "making" problematic UGC is much less direct than Google's role in making Imagen outputs.
- _joel 4y ago
  It's amazing isn't, how much crap can get spouted on the internet nowadays
Gigachad 4y ago
Facebook is a recommendation engine. The problem isn't so much the content, its that facebook chooses to show it to people who did not actively seek it out. You never see people complain at Chrome for showing the content or nginx for hosting it. Recommendation engines are more responsible than basic infrastructure.
- capitalsigma 4y ago
  So you would say that if FB fails to censor a video titled "vaccines cause autism" that drives engagement, they are more morally culpable for the content than if Google spends TPU cycles rendering the Imagen prompt input: "detailed video about why vaccines cause autism, scientific, realistic, in the style of a public health announcement" ?

johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago

There is not ehtical concern. Google will shut it down regardless.

infoseek12 4y ago

Google has done incredible work on basic machine learning research that has enabled other individuals and organizations to do amazing things. In terms of actually implementing new machine learning technology, they've pretty much hobbled themselves to the point of irrelevance. In some ways, it may be for the best that they've ensured that the future of machine learning will be written primarily by those who hold opposing views.

alphabetting 4y ago
My sense has been that Google and Deepmind ML has been pretty ingrained across the board in Google services. If they're still producing the the most advanced AI research, I don't see why that wouldn't be introduced into future products as well.
- infoseek12 4y ago
  I'm sure machine learning has already been introduced in one way or another in almost all of Google's services. But the implementations are mostly in the backend and enhancements like better recommendations that don't jump out as incredible leaps in artificial intelligence. They are almost exclusively incremental rather than radical innovations, quantitative and not qualitative improvements. In terms of machine learning technology that introduces truly novel innovations Google's product portfolio is notable barren. For instance the incredible powerful potential for image generation these new diffusion models open up, who's models will the world use to explore the potential and start using this technology? Google's model with the intense, though imperfect, effort that goes into addressing questions of bias and abuse? Or the model bankrolled by an ex hedge fund manager who probably put a bit less thought into addressing these questions?
  - alphabetting 4y ago
    Distribution is key. I've used some mind blowing betas from AI LLM startups recently who just put disclaimers on potential content issues. They are amazing and don't get a ton of use. The fact Google has seemingly the best product (just not releasing until they're ready) and over 3 billion users makes me think getting the world to use won't be an issue.

jquery 4y ago

You call it "concern trolling", I call it responsible research. It's not "social justice" to be concerned about the ability of any entity to make propaganda videos for virtually free. "Ok Google, produce a CDC-type public information video about how vaccines cause autism and disability". Not that I would have a complaint if social justice was the sole thing keeping it from being released. Facebook managed to cause genocides by being careless.

colordrops 4y ago
That would make sense if Google were somehow in a deserved position of authority to decide who is allowed access and what it's used for, rather than an advertising company with a heavily skewed bias that doesn't necessarily take the public good into account.
Guid_NewGuid 4y ago
I agree with you and was saddened to see such a comment rise to the top. I don't hold that GPs opinion is wrong, in fact I have no firm views yet on the AI and would generally lean towards stuff being made available even when harmful. But the idea that people in the field of AI Ethics are all some woke SJW cabal designed to keep Google powerful is for the birds. Like all industry adjacent fields I'm sure there's some corporate capture of research in the field, but maybe, engaging with things in good faith, there are ethical questions about a powerful new technology that can replicate biases in its training data at unprecedented speed and quality?

ehsankia 4y ago

Ironically nearly all ML demos like Stable Diffusion are setup and run for free on Google's Colab, so to claim they don't want to help the field is a little silly.

ekianjo 4y ago
Stable diffusion can run anywhere
- ehsankia 4y ago
  I didn't set it can't, I said the majority of people who have limited skill set with ML and troubleshooting it end up using the Colab version since it's much more straightforward and easy for average people to get started with. And that's for all ML stuff, Colab has lead to a huge democratization of ML, with notebooks setups for basically any cool demo you see out there.
waffletower 4y ago
Stable Diffusion is severely limited in the memory constrained Google Colab context.

thweriuo234234 4y ago

Imaginably, if the model produced sufficient propaganda against Hindus, the model would be feted for its social-justice creds.

macrolocal 4y ago

Scrappy startups soak up all the liability; Google retains its technical edge and earns some goodwill.

ekianjo 4y ago
good will? are we talking about the same Google?
- macrolocal 4y ago
  Yes, Google has billions in goodwill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting) https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NASDAQ/Company/Alphabet-Inc/Analysis/Goodwill-and-Intangible-Assets https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NASDAQ/Company/Alphabet-In... Looks like typical MBA craft to me.

westhom 4y ago

I always read statements like “sorry we can’t release this ground breaking technology to the public, you simply can’t handle its power and repercussions” as the AI industry low key flex.

mrinterweb 4y ago

It is probably more of a liability concern where Google doesn't want a headline starting with: "Google created a video of ____ (horrific thing)"

theptip 4y ago

I don’t know about this take. Remember all of the shitstorms that the NYT et. al. kicked up over biased/racist/sexist AI? Remember Tay? I think if you are Google, you are terrified of the bad PR from someone generating something questionable. And that bad article is inevitable if you open up these models. (See, pornpen.ai being released approximately five minutes after StableDiffusion. Imagine the press if that was built from the mode Google published.) An open source community is a diffuse target, so the NYT won’t go after them as quickly, and let's be honest, their axe to grind is with big tech, not a bunch of AI hackers.

i_like_apis 4y ago
It’s better for them to not say anything about it when they don’t release the model. This is what Meta has done for the same technology and I respect that. They don’t imply any ridiculous idea that such models should or even can be “racially balanced”. But if they want to cover their butts from the possibility of silly controversy, I think that’s cowardly and unnecessary, but at least they could not go out of their way to imply that such controversy should be taken seriously.

make3 4y ago

I think it's actually about brand risk

mola 4y ago

1. How do you know there will be no harm or is no harm? These issues are not manifesting in a timeline of a few weeks. 2. Why do you think the ethical reasoning is disengenious in Google's case? Even in OpenAI case it could be that originally the ethicist won some battles where business ppl eventually prevailed. 3. Why do you use quotes around a something which is your original phrasing? That's pretty disengenious. 4. What's wrong with affirmative action ? It's easy to argue that it has both utilitarian and other moral adventages. I won't claim it is always warranted or the right thing to do, but it definitely not an obvious consensual evil.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
Affirmative action (like google’s moral imperatives here) are fairly unpopular, so many view their actions as a kind of encroaching cultural imperialism. When Google talks about “safety” it means enforcing a very specific set of beliefs that frankly a large majority of people disagree with.* It isn’t impermissible for Google to do this, but nobody has to like it, or agree with it. *for instance, affirmative action is disapproved of by 70-80% of Americans and couldn’t win on a ballot in California in 2020 which is pretty exceptional.
i_like_apis 4y ago
It not only isn’t technically feasible, it also isn’t rational, or even ethical to be portraying a warped version of the world. What they want is for results of “software engineer” to be equally likely to show black females. This is not fair to Eskimos and Aboriginals. And what about the mentally handicapped? Is it not unfair that people with Downs Syndrome are not Wall Street stock brokers? How are you going to find all of these “affluent” categories and claim to be able to balance them? And are you going to claim racism again when to ask for prison inmates and you don’t find any Asians? Should you start putting latent space Asians in latent space prisons? Because this is a main harp of the social justice “ethicists” - that if you ask these models for “gang member” you get “People Of Color!!” … as if they simply don’t understand the statistics of situation. How would you even “solve” that? Should you decide when and where certain ethnic groups should be taken down a peg? Latent space affirmative action is technically absurd, an completely ironic as “ethical” behavior.

stared 4y ago

It is not a matter of ethics. Do you think it is the priority for such corporations? It is a matter of PR. It takes a single "problematic" generated content to be framed as "Google is sexist/racist/supports animal abuse", etc. Statements related to ethics help in a few ways: holding secrets ("oh, we would love to share the models, but we cannot"), protecting against backslash (PR-wise, legal-wise), and PR on its own ("we are that ethical - see! it is even in our mission statement").

raxxorraxor 4y ago

This was never about ethics, this was only about control. Of language, behavior and they need these stories for plausible deniability. They are advertisers and know what they are doing.