4 ms·

This is nothing to do with the philosophy of the people working at big tech companies. Firstly, that ethical ship sailed long ago when Google repeatedly and pu

This is nothing to do with the philosophy of the people working at big tech companies. Firstly, that ethical ship sailed long ago when Google repeatedly and publicly shafted the ethical parts of its team - whether that's the AI ethicists getting the boot, Google walkout organisers getting the boot, or Google pursuing new contracts with the military. And Google is arguably the most woke of the big tech. Apple and Microsoft have never pretended to care what their employees think, and Facebook love to be the bad guys. Big Tech's approach to AI is nothing to do with AI. It's to do with the same thing that killed Kodak and Nokia. Large existing technology businesses have an existing business with a reputation to protect and it's almost impossible for them to value the possible future revenue of what is currently a money sink vs the very real actual revenue they could lose by burning their reputations. It's the same reason BMW won't put a death trap self-driving car on the road. They aren't woke, they're making justifiable strategic decisions. Now: Here's the good news- that totally opens up the market to start ups and new entrants! Which is how silicon valley has always worked, and the real thing putting that in danger is the pipeline of emerging companies like OpenAI and Figma being snapped up by the older less competitive establihsed companies.

rayiner 3y ago
> It's the same reason BMW won't put a death trap self-driving car on the road. They aren't woke, they're making justifiable strategic decisions Nobody finds it peculiar that a car company would prioritize safety. Thats an understandable value system to 99.9% of people. By contrast most people think it’s odd that a search company would care so much about people’s skin color that they would alter user inputs in order to get the system to change the races of people shown in the results. That’s a classic example of “go woke, go broke.”

rayiner 3y ago

> It's the same reason BMW won't put a death trap self-driving car on the road. They aren't woke, they're making justifiable strategic decisions Nobody finds it peculiar that a car company would prioritize safety. Thats an understandable value system to 99.9% of people. By contrast most people think it’s odd that a search company would care so much about people’s skin color that they would alter user inputs in order to get the system to change the races of people shown in the results. That’s a classic example of “go woke, go broke.”