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Does it matter what is the origin of that opinion? As long as it is a good insight into the situation and accurately reflects the state of affairs, it shouldn’t

Does it matter what is the origin of that opinion? As long as it is a good insight into the situation and accurately reflects the state of affairs, it shouldn’t matter, right? And as to not being the leader at Google, this hardly matters. Being politically adept and leadership skills don’t necessarily correlate with having better feel and insights into the future technology. And not being the leader reduces filters, doesn’t have a pull of a contract to protect specific people you lead and your own project, etc. It’d be better to hear that from a founder, for certain, but a honest opinion of a well seasoned engineer often enough is a better reflection of the reality, than an official statement by a “leading force”.

oh_sigh 3y ago
Was any previously unknown info about Google leaked in the memo, that only an insider could know? If not, then why does it even matter that a googler wrote it? If "Anonymous" wrote the doc and uploaded it to pastebin, would you lend it the same credence you are to this doc?
ninth_ant 3y ago
It does matter, because Google is an important actor in this “industry”. Even if it doesn’t represent a monolithic “googles thoughts on AI” it is interesting and newsworthy to consider how at least some folks who work at Google think about the recent developments. If Google goes on a AI-everything spree and forces it awkwardly into all their products a la Google+ — this may indicate how and where AI will be useful to people (or not).
UncleMeat 3y ago
Google has nearly 200,000 employees. Almost every possible opinion is held by somebody within the company. Imagine this was written by Blake Lemoine, who believed that one of the earlier models was sentient. Would it be reasonable to present this as a company-wide belief?
- startupsfail 3y ago
  No, but a company-wide belief doesn’t matter. Some 200,000 lemmings can be mistaken, along with the chief lemming. Or all of them can be right. The discussion here is regarding a particular opinion of a particular employee. And what matters is how informed and honest that particular employee is. And if ultimately that employee is right or wrong. If there is some objective truth in his or her statement. (And for a reference, I don’t think that these 200,000 Googlers or Lemoine were right or wrong, it feels like Lemoine was asking/answering a wrong question, which needs to be asked differently to have a well defined answer).
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    I do not believe a single headline that has attributed the doc to a single googler rather than to Google in general.
fauigerzigerk 3y ago
>Does it matter what is the origin of that opinion? As long as it is a good insight into the situation and accurately reflects the state of affairs, it shouldn’t matter, right? It does matter a great deal whether a particular opinion is held by someone with the power to act on it or by someone who can only try to influence those who can act on it.
MrScruff 3y ago
It matters because the memo as being portrayed as 'the opinion of Google' by websites looking for clicks. The opinion is as relevant or not as any opinion expressed on Hacker News, the fact that the person who expressed it works for Google is irrelevant.
- startupsfail 3y ago
  Well, there a honest opinion of an unbiased engineer, ideally a researcher who was trained to filter his own biases, from the inside of the organization , speaking honesty is likely the best approximation that you can get for “an opinion of Google”. It is important that the engineer is an insider, as from outside of Google access to its internal knowledge is limited.
  - skybrian 3y ago
    Googlers are no more unbiased than someone who gets a job somewhere else. Getting a job at Google might affect your opinions somewhat when you see what people are doing, but there is no special training in being unbiased. Also, the document we're discussing was not written as a serious research paper. It's a more like one of Steve Yegge's rants, written to be provocative. When something Yegge wrote while at Google leaked, people knew who he was, so it was interpreted as "here's what Yegge thinks." It's the same in this case, but it's someone else who isn't famous.
    - mattlondon 3y ago
      > but there is no special training in being unbiased Citation needed! ;-)
      - skybrian 3y ago
        Well, I didn't get any training like that when I worked there, but it was a long time ago and I don't know what they're teaching Nooglers these days. I suppose you might be referring to diversity training, but it's not the same thing.

oh_sigh 3y ago

Was any previously unknown info about Google leaked in the memo, that only an insider could know? If not, then why does it even matter that a googler wrote it? If "Anonymous" wrote the doc and uploaded it to pastebin, would you lend it the same credence you are to this doc?

ninth_ant 3y ago

It does matter, because Google is an important actor in this “industry”. Even if it doesn’t represent a monolithic “googles thoughts on AI” it is interesting and newsworthy to consider how at least some folks who work at Google think about the recent developments. If Google goes on a AI-everything spree and forces it awkwardly into all their products a la Google+ — this may indicate how and where AI will be useful to people (or not).

UncleMeat 3y ago

Google has nearly 200,000 employees. Almost every possible opinion is held by somebody within the company. Imagine this was written by Blake Lemoine, who believed that one of the earlier models was sentient. Would it be reasonable to present this as a company-wide belief?

startupsfail 3y ago
No, but a company-wide belief doesn’t matter. Some 200,000 lemmings can be mistaken, along with the chief lemming. Or all of them can be right. The discussion here is regarding a particular opinion of a particular employee. And what matters is how informed and honest that particular employee is. And if ultimately that employee is right or wrong. If there is some objective truth in his or her statement. (And for a reference, I don’t think that these 200,000 Googlers or Lemoine were right or wrong, it feels like Lemoine was asking/answering a wrong question, which needs to be asked differently to have a well defined answer).
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  I do not believe a single headline that has attributed the doc to a single googler rather than to Google in general.

fauigerzigerk 3y ago

>Does it matter what is the origin of that opinion? As long as it is a good insight into the situation and accurately reflects the state of affairs, it shouldn’t matter, right? It does matter a great deal whether a particular opinion is held by someone with the power to act on it or by someone who can only try to influence those who can act on it.

MrScruff 3y ago

It matters because the memo as being portrayed as 'the opinion of Google' by websites looking for clicks. The opinion is as relevant or not as any opinion expressed on Hacker News, the fact that the person who expressed it works for Google is irrelevant.

startupsfail 3y ago
Well, there a honest opinion of an unbiased engineer, ideally a researcher who was trained to filter his own biases, from the inside of the organization , speaking honesty is likely the best approximation that you can get for “an opinion of Google”. It is important that the engineer is an insider, as from outside of Google access to its internal knowledge is limited.
- skybrian 3y ago
  Googlers are no more unbiased than someone who gets a job somewhere else. Getting a job at Google might affect your opinions somewhat when you see what people are doing, but there is no special training in being unbiased. Also, the document we're discussing was not written as a serious research paper. It's a more like one of Steve Yegge's rants, written to be provocative. When something Yegge wrote while at Google leaked, people knew who he was, so it was interpreted as "here's what Yegge thinks." It's the same in this case, but it's someone else who isn't famous.
  - mattlondon 3y ago
    > but there is no special training in being unbiased Citation needed! ;-)
    - skybrian 3y ago
      Well, I didn't get any training like that when I worked there, but it was a long time ago and I don't know what they're teaching Nooglers these days. I suppose you might be referring to diversity training, but it's not the same thing.