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I believe people should take care to add "men and women at" before talking about companies. Companies and corporations are abstractions. There are real people t

I believe people should take care to add "men and women at" before talking about companies. Companies and corporations are abstractions. There are real people taking these actions. - "Men and women at IBM promised to back off facial recognition, then signed a $70M contract for it" - "Men and women would sell equipment for total surveillance and oppression" etc. The reason I think this is important is that there's actually a very small number of people relative to the general population that are capable of producing this technology. It's easy to be angry at the suits, or at the broad abstraction "IBM" for enabling this, but the fact of the matter is that there are spineless cowards out there getting up every morning to go and build facial recognition software. They deserve the ire of thinking people. No matter what the era is, there will be sociopaths running large organizations looking to control everyone, but these days there's a huge coterie of nerds getting paid handsomely to help.

Retric 3y ago
I think you’re vastly underestimating how many people can figure it out with a little research and on the job training. The basic government consulting model is to take fresh collage grads and have them muddle through. And while yes it’s a horrific waste of taxpayer money, it also works surprisingly often.
toyg 3y ago
> spineless cowards It's hard to be brave when you have to support a family, pay for a mortgage, pay for the kids' college, etc. I remember feeling queasy, almost 20 years ago, when I got hired for a very good salary to do helpdesk, and realized the customers I had to support included some Bad Actors: big mining, big arm manufacturing, even big spying... but I could finally afford to buy a small house, marry my partner, and start a family. So I sucked it up, and without that experience I wouldn't be where I am now.
- quacked 3y ago
  > It's hard to be brave when By definition, the only time it's possible to be brave is when it's hard.
  - toyg 3y ago
    But there is "putting your own at risk" and "putting your family at risk".
    - fakedang 3y ago
      That's why I assume most commenters who talk the big talk about bravery are either uncommitted or privileged.
  - hypercube33 3y ago
    Reminds me of my favorite DS9 quite BASHIR: It's not your fault that things are the way they are. LEE: Everybody tells themselves that, and nothing ever changes.
4ggr0 3y ago
Or to avoid using the gender binary we could just use "People/Humans at IBM" :) Agree otherwise.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  Or to avoid using the anthropocentric language, we could just use "Consciousnesses at IBM" :)
bo1024 3y ago
Point taken, but an important point here is exactly that companies are abstractions, and they exhibit emergent behavior -- cases where the the company as a whole, responding to "its" incentives, "does" things that no individual at the company would necessarily do or even condone if it were all up to them.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  At the end of the day, some engineer has to sit down and say "I'm going to make this evil thing because the boss is paying me to do it". That's a breach of ethics. That emergent behavior is enabled, at every step, by complacency.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    Groupthink. Lots of those inside the company are convinced what they are doing is good.
    - heliodor 3y ago
      They're not convinced, they convince themselves. To avoid mental dissonance. We all do all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to live with ourselves.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
You are right. This was settled with the Nuremberg principles and code in the wake of the last world war. Group apologetics are cowardly and unacceptable. People of excellent character, some of them genuine leaders, step up and accept responsibility for the moral failures of organisations they head. Those "merely following orders" deserve no protection. We must stop blaming "the system", or "inevitable progress", or "capitalism", or whatever abstraction. It is terribly weak and avoidant to do so. It seems perfectly fair to put names to actions having broad effect. I think the (as you say) _few_ people who make far reaching decisions in technology deserve treating as de-facto public figures, as worthy of public scrutiny as political representatives. Want to "invent" some disruptive new technology that changes the world? At least have the decency to put your name to it, stand by it and defend it ethically. Otherwise what you're doing looks more like terrorism than science. Actual individual _people_ make awful decisions, knowing that they are awful, and hoping to get away with it through "safety in numbers". We should welcome whatever puts moral pressure on such individuals to act properly, and not to hide behind their "gang". Corporations have become a rock beneath which rather little sunlight shines nowdays.
- bmicraft 3y ago
  > This was settled with the Nuremberg principles and code in the wake of the last world war You're right about that, but unfortunately got the facts wrong. In reality most people that weren't high ranking officials were let go.
rqtwteye 3y ago
“there are spineless cowards out there getting up every morning to go and build facial recognition software.” Almost any technology can be abused. There are a lot of good uses for facial recognition and also a lot of bad. I don’t think the people who develop technology are responsible of cowards for how it’s being used. That’s up to the big guys. If you want to work on stuff that’s for sure only used for “good” purposes, your world will be very small.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  This isn't a case of "we're making this for some noble purpose, but it might be abused". This is "we're making this so that we can use it for evil". Like the engineers at Palintir who were working on the whole predictive policing thing. There's no good that can come of that (I suppose the same could be true if you left out everything after "Palintir" in that sentence). The core motivation of developing the technology is evil.
  - carbotaniuman 3y ago
    Predictive policing feels like something that someone could think would be noble but could be abused though? Like to me, most things that we consider "evil", someone else could conceivably consider noble or useful or at least a net positive.
FridgeSeal 3y ago
I don’t believe that treating these orgs with kid-gloves solves anything and in fact only serves to perpetuate the ineffective repercussions leveraged against organisations that do the wrong thing. “Oh no they’re just people, let’s be nice”: ok if they’re just people then they can hear the responsibility and the blame. They did the wrong thing and deserve the shame that comes with that. If we’re expected to remember the humans in the org, then the humans don’t get to hide behind nebulous, faceless, corporate veils.

Retric 3y ago

I think you’re vastly underestimating how many people can figure it out with a little research and on the job training. The basic government consulting model is to take fresh collage grads and have them muddle through. And while yes it’s a horrific waste of taxpayer money, it also works surprisingly often.

toyg 3y ago

> spineless cowards It's hard to be brave when you have to support a family, pay for a mortgage, pay for the kids' college, etc. I remember feeling queasy, almost 20 years ago, when I got hired for a very good salary to do helpdesk, and realized the customers I had to support included some Bad Actors: big mining, big arm manufacturing, even big spying... but I could finally afford to buy a small house, marry my partner, and start a family. So I sucked it up, and without that experience I wouldn't be where I am now.

quacked 3y ago
> It's hard to be brave when By definition, the only time it's possible to be brave is when it's hard.
- toyg 3y ago
  But there is "putting your own at risk" and "putting your family at risk".
  - fakedang 3y ago
    That's why I assume most commenters who talk the big talk about bravery are either uncommitted or privileged.
- hypercube33 3y ago
  Reminds me of my favorite DS9 quite BASHIR: It's not your fault that things are the way they are. LEE: Everybody tells themselves that, and nothing ever changes.

4ggr0 3y ago

Or to avoid using the gender binary we could just use "People/Humans at IBM" :) Agree otherwise.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bheadmaster 3y ago
Or to avoid using the anthropocentric language, we could just use "Consciousnesses at IBM" :)

bo1024 3y ago

Point taken, but an important point here is exactly that companies are abstractions, and they exhibit emergent behavior -- cases where the the company as a whole, responding to "its" incentives, "does" things that no individual at the company would necessarily do or even condone if it were all up to them.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago
At the end of the day, some engineer has to sit down and say "I'm going to make this evil thing because the boss is paying me to do it". That's a breach of ethics. That emergent behavior is enabled, at every step, by complacency.
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  Groupthink. Lots of those inside the company are convinced what they are doing is good.
  - heliodor 3y ago
    They're not convinced, they convince themselves. To avoid mental dissonance. We all do all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to live with ourselves.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

You are right. This was settled with the Nuremberg principles and code in the wake of the last world war. Group apologetics are cowardly and unacceptable. People of excellent character, some of them genuine leaders, step up and accept responsibility for the moral failures of organisations they head. Those "merely following orders" deserve no protection. We must stop blaming "the system", or "inevitable progress", or "capitalism", or whatever abstraction. It is terribly weak and avoidant to do so. It seems perfectly fair to put names to actions having broad effect. I think the (as you say) _few_ people who make far reaching decisions in technology deserve treating as de-facto public figures, as worthy of public scrutiny as political representatives. Want to "invent" some disruptive new technology that changes the world? At least have the decency to put your name to it, stand by it and defend it ethically. Otherwise what you're doing looks more like terrorism than science. Actual individual _people_ make awful decisions, knowing that they are awful, and hoping to get away with it through "safety in numbers". We should welcome whatever puts moral pressure on such individuals to act properly, and not to hide behind their "gang". Corporations have become a rock beneath which rather little sunlight shines nowdays.

bmicraft 3y ago
> This was settled with the Nuremberg principles and code in the wake of the last world war You're right about that, but unfortunately got the facts wrong. In reality most people that weren't high ranking officials were let go.

rqtwteye 3y ago

“there are spineless cowards out there getting up every morning to go and build facial recognition software.” Almost any technology can be abused. There are a lot of good uses for facial recognition and also a lot of bad. I don’t think the people who develop technology are responsible of cowards for how it’s being used. That’s up to the big guys. If you want to work on stuff that’s for sure only used for “good” purposes, your world will be very small.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago
This isn't a case of "we're making this for some noble purpose, but it might be abused". This is "we're making this so that we can use it for evil". Like the engineers at Palintir who were working on the whole predictive policing thing. There's no good that can come of that (I suppose the same could be true if you left out everything after "Palintir" in that sentence). The core motivation of developing the technology is evil.
- carbotaniuman 3y ago
  Predictive policing feels like something that someone could think would be noble but could be abused though? Like to me, most things that we consider "evil", someone else could conceivably consider noble or useful or at least a net positive.

FridgeSeal 3y ago

I don’t believe that treating these orgs with kid-gloves solves anything and in fact only serves to perpetuate the ineffective repercussions leveraged against organisations that do the wrong thing. “Oh no they’re just people, let’s be nice”: ok if they’re just people then they can hear the responsibility and the blame. They did the wrong thing and deserve the shame that comes with that. If we’re expected to remember the humans in the org, then the humans don’t get to hide behind nebulous, faceless, corporate veils.