3 ms·

Exactly, this is a form of ass coverage and not a genuine desire to do good. The job of ethics, legal, compliance, etc. departments is not necessarily to ensure

Exactly, this is a form of ass coverage and not a genuine desire to do good. The job of ethics, legal, compliance, etc. departments is not necessarily to ensure the company behaves like a boy scout but to ensure that they have plausible deniability when they don't and to prevent companies from making expensive mistakes. The potential damage to the company is substantial and having such departments is a form of insurance against that. A necessary evil. The flip side is that such departments can put the brakes on because not doing risky things is the best way to ensure you don't take risk. If you ask a lawyer if you should do X, the answer is almost certainly going to be a "no" or a "yes" with a lot of "buts and ifs". That's their job and they bias to playing it safe. Same with financial compliance departments. Etc. That's fine if you are in a slow moving line of business where nothing changes much. But when you need to move more quickly, having a lot of internal bureaucracy and box ticking isn't helpful. With AI, it kind of stopped being academic in the past few years and this is now a multi billion dollar business opportunity that requires companies to act decisively and with purpose. Companies sitting on their hands because it's risky, scary, etc. are going to end up being sidelined. And of course there are some companies going all in on this. Most of these are startups that can afford to take risk. Meaning they are not going to fight with their hands behind their backs taking it carefully, easy, and slowly. Going all in means doing things that are risky, a little bit uncomfortable, and have uncertain outcomes. We see that playing out with the behavior of MS relative to Google. Google is not launching the AI stuff they have because it might do or say something embarrassing. MS has in fact launched a few AI things that said and did something mildly embarrassing (taybot, and recently the bing chat bot). Very entertaining. But it's fine. They learn from it and move on. Limited damage and it actually got them a lot of positive press. Making mistakes is an essential part of R&D. Having an ethics department trying to slow down things isn't that helpful.

staunton 4y ago
"Genuine desire to do good" doesn't make money and leads to less shareholder value. If "desire to do good" exists in a company, it is necessarily eliminated when the company either gets more efficient or fails. In order to even allow a company to "try to do good", the only possible measures are to change incentives and the environment in which it operates. Regulation and customer choice can change incentives. The environment (such as how people in the job market value money compared to working environment, "doing good", etc.) evolves naturally and is hard to change with purpose (my definition of environment in this context). I tend to view things like having such company roles a bit more positive. Yes, in most companies such a role cannot achieve almost anything and is created mainly for PR purposes. However, the people filling that role often really care about making a positive impact. The mere fact that having such a role does serve a PR purpose signals slowly moving in that direction. One just shouldn't expect all the people who didn't care before to have a sudden epiphany and become Mother Theresa. Change is possible and it often happens quickly, ever more quickly these days than in history. Imagine how abolition of slavery in the US south must have felt like. Moving towards "doing good" is hard, painful and prone to fail. I think incentivizing the creation of these PR roles is a lot better than doing nothing. Pretending to care and not caring is hypocritical but it actually still leads to better outcomes than everyone proudly not caring and constructing an ideology about why they shouldn't.

staunton 4y ago

"Genuine desire to do good" doesn't make money and leads to less shareholder value. If "desire to do good" exists in a company, it is necessarily eliminated when the company either gets more efficient or fails. In order to even allow a company to "try to do good", the only possible measures are to change incentives and the environment in which it operates. Regulation and customer choice can change incentives. The environment (such as how people in the job market value money compared to working environment, "doing good", etc.) evolves naturally and is hard to change with purpose (my definition of environment in this context). I tend to view things like having such company roles a bit more positive. Yes, in most companies such a role cannot achieve almost anything and is created mainly for PR purposes. However, the people filling that role often really care about making a positive impact. The mere fact that having such a role does serve a PR purpose signals slowly moving in that direction. One just shouldn't expect all the people who didn't care before to have a sudden epiphany and become Mother Theresa. Change is possible and it often happens quickly, ever more quickly these days than in history. Imagine how abolition of slavery in the US south must have felt like. Moving towards "doing good" is hard, painful and prone to fail. I think incentivizing the creation of these PR roles is a lot better than doing nothing. Pretending to care and not caring is hypocritical but it actually still leads to better outcomes than everyone proudly not caring and constructing an ideology about why they shouldn't.