7 ms·

Google defends scrapping AI pledges and DEI goals in all-staff meeting

94 points by belter 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43029086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43029086
belter 2y ago
https://archive.is/3FGOH https://archive.is/3FGOH
AlexErrant 2y ago
Of particular note: > Parker said that, as a federal contractor, the company has been reviewing all of its programs and initiatives in response to Donald Trump’s executive orders that direct federal agencies and contractors to dismantle DEI work.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
> “What’s not changing is we’ve always hired the best person for the job,” she said, according to a recording of the meeting the Guardian reviewed. This is obviously a lie. Google’s more senior leaders had (and probably still have) quotas for hiring and promotions. If you didn’t hit quotas, not only did you face intense pressure to artificially skew things when HR reviewed numbers, but your performance (and compensation) would also be affected. Many people have privately talked about this, but most are afraid to speak up, due to the aggression of the progressive employees and the official DEI machine (from HR). I wonder if Sundar will be brave enough to admit fault in how they handled the past, instead of just pretending nothing is changing. I am reminded of James Damore’s situation - he discussed something controversial in a polite way, with sources backing up his ideas, but was viciously attacked inside Google and also outside. News media regularly misrepresented what he said. His firing was unfair. That was just one example of how the company operated all this time. If that’s changing, they should own up to it.
- malcolmgreaves 2y ago
  These quotas you speak of do not and have never existed. James was a below average engineer who wanted the special treatment of his daddy’s generation.
  - Larrikin 2y ago
    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna835836 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna835836 Seems like his firing was completely justified. But is also a knock against Google for hiring him in the first place.
    - gotoeleven 2y ago
      You know neuroticism is a term of art in psychology, right? It's a value neutral term, not a pejorative. If your argument is that he deserves firing because he's sexist and your evidence that he's sexist is he called women neurotic then you're part of the reason we can't have reasoned debates.
      - pfisherman 2y ago
        You can argue until you are blue in the face that people should not have interpreted what he wrote as offensive. But in fact a very large number of people did.
    - pfisherman 2y ago
      I dunno. Could be that the hiring practices at the time, or the team that interviewed him vetted algorithmic problem solving skill and did not run a vibe check on social or emotional intelligence. Because blasting out a company wide post / email disparaging and entire class of people (who are like 50 percent of the population), and then getting indignant about the entirely foreseeable backlash is indicative of extremely low EQ.
  - gotoeleven 2y ago
    What special treatment did he want?
miohtama 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deideiohthatdei 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - pell 2y ago
    I think it's definitely helpful to describe a source's political leaning to add context to a discussion. However, claiming that they generally "hate big tech, love DEI" seems a little disingenuous. I think, HN is best when it's nuanced and does not jump and feed on hyperbolic culture war topics primarily used as ragebait. There surely are many articles supportive of diversity initiatives published by the Guardian. But they have also published critical and nuanced articles on the subject. Here are a two examples: "Focusing on diversity means we miss the big picture. It’s class that shapes our lives" -> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/29/focusing-on-diversity-means-we-miss-the-big-picture-its-class-that-shapes-our-lives https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/29/focusi... "So your company uses diversity training. Does it even work?" -> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/workplace-diversity-training-does-it-work-racial-justice https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/workplace-dive...
  - ddq 2y ago
    It's funny that this could be interpreted as either far left (the biases against marginalized people need to be heavily counteracted in order for them to succeed) or far right (without DEI they would be unable to succeed on their own merits because they are less able than the typical white male straight christians). What it can't be interpreted as is reasonable. It's insulting no matter how you look at it, either paternalistic or white supremecist. Saying that everyone who isn't of certain skin color, gender, religion, or orientation is "fucked" without relatively recent HR initiatives is on its face ridiculous and insulting to those who have succeeded without it, which is the vast majority of them! Probably not what you actually meant but this whole topic seems so ridiculously polarized that people will post those type of extemist interpretations without a second thought. e: ah, just looked at the username and account creation date. I'm now rescinding my assumption of good faith intent.
oulipo 2y ago
Shameful
frognumber 2y ago
I usually evaluate people based on how they behave by their own stated values and codes. It's been a good rule. What's been amazing to me is how skin-deep the stated values across the tech industry were. Virtually every executive is behaving in ways they would fire their employees for just a few months ago. The executives have no moral compass as human beings. I believed this to be the case before, since the people I've interacted with who rose that high did so by being psychopaths, but what's amazing is how on display it is. I don't mind the before or the after so much as the very, very transparent about-face.
- Analemma_ 2y ago
  It's more-or-less impossible to become a sufficiently-senior executive at a sufficiently-large company without being a psychopath. You should have a baseline assumption that all executives at large corporations have no values whatsoever beyond doing what benefits them personally, you'll be a lot less surprised at their behavior if you do.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    What about large tech funding orgs? ;-)
    - frognumber 2y ago
      Depends on how they got there. It's in the selection process. Anything with competition about 1000:1 leads to cheating and psychopathic behavior. Anything below 1:4 doesn't. Iterated 1:4 does again.
  - frognumber 2y ago
    That's generally my assumption, but with some exceptions. What selects for psychopaths is the process of climbing the corporate ladder. However, there are ways to get to the top of the corporate ladder without climbing it. For example, Larry and Sergei didn't seem like psychopaths. Neither did Omar Bose. Many other founders aren't. Ditto for most processes with extreme selective pressures (e.g. most senator, PoTUS, many elite academics, elite law firm partner, etc.). People win by optimizing to the process. People with ethics, or who don't cheat, don't win. There are exceptions, but they're in the minority. For example, if you are an extreme genius or stumble on a major breakthrough, in science, and don't have it stolen by a psychopath. You got downvoted, so I'll provide two references: * Power by Pfeffer * Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita Very different takes, but same general conclusion. Both are respected academics at Stanford and NYU, respectively, with de Mesquita being far more respected, and an excellent read. Power is a bit less so
JCM9 2y ago
The AI items are concerning. The DEI stuff though is gone and isn’t coming back. The concept was well intentioned but, quite ironically, these programs turned into a hub of biased discriminatory behavior and it was becoming increasingly hard to paint them as anything else.
- RustySpottedCat 2y ago
  There was a zero chance the company with the best AI LLM models would not get involved in weaponization, willingly or not. DAI is going to be one of the first things the next administration brings back, mark my words. Saying it's discriminatory is like saying affirmative action is discriminatory
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    my guess is any new administration would realize it’s a massive political loser. i’m personally in favor of some limited AA in unis, but if even black people are majority against AA when polled… it’s definitely not coming back. might be that this changes once minority groups realize how much of an impact it was actually having, i think a large segment of people convinced themselves that a lot more of these admissions were by pure merit than is supported by the data.
    - Aachen 2y ago
      What's an aa? I get American Airlines when I duck it and I know of libaa but that doesn't fit the context either
      - whimsicalism 2y ago
        affirmative action. you can also generally just copy and paste into chatgpt and it will be able to answer your question
        Aachen 2y ago
        (And burn a tree in the process as compared to a human answer) Thanks for clarifying!
knallfrosch 2y ago
I always wonder how they do it. These spineless corporate suits. One month they're shoving DEI down your throat ("underrepresented, marginalized"), next month they're killing these programs and writing that they have always hired the "best" people for the job. Obviously, some people of the organization are different, but not all. How do they do it? Just treat it like a job and do whatever the bag full of money demands? Or do they double-think like in 1984 and convince themselves that they themselves also believe it?
- Jensson 2y ago
  How did democrat politicians go from saying we shouldn't legalize gay marriage to then saying you are a horrible homophobe if you are against it in a couple of years? The answer is the same, some people just say what they think will give them the most power and advantages. If denying gay rights gives them votes? "Of course they shouldn't have any!" Wait, no, gay rights give votes?? "Oh, yeah anyone who doesn't give them rights is the worst!" Almost all leaders are like that in a large enough population, since if you say what people want to hear you tend to bubble upwards.
  - sympil 2y ago
    In 2004 John Kerry lost the election due to two things. One of them was his support for gay marriage being legal. Stupid commericals like this one were made: https://youtu.be/4AzLrn5JVIo?si=bYtAbriIbp0AVrxP https://youtu.be/4AzLrn5JVIo?si=bYtAbriIbp0AVrxP Obama was adamant that he did not support legislation to legalize gay marriage. When SCOTUS legalized it he was caught off guard but he and other Democrats were able to then fully embrace the issue. The nation’s view on the topic rapidly changed and now it is a nonissue for most Republicans.
    - rat87 2y ago
      John Kerry was for civil unions and against gay marriage in 2004. Not saying that position or what people claimed or thought his opinion was didn't effect it but he didn't come out pro gay marriage until much later. Is say the swift boat thing and the flip flop accusations are what hurt him Also many Republicans are still very anti gay marriage
rkagerer 2y ago
Google used AI to summarize the ~200 questions its employees posed ahead of this meeting regarding its DEI and AI policies. The final two paragraphs of the article are telling: The third-most-popular question employees asked was why the AI summaries were so bad. “The AI summaries of questions on Ask are terrible. Can we go back to answering the questions people actually asked?” it read. I thought summarization was a task AI was considered good at. If their own tech sucks at this, what makes us think it's safe to use in the context of war?
- kotaKat 2y ago
  What, Googlers don't like AI summaries shoved down their throat? Too bad, it's a feature, and features can't be disabled! :)
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    You will eat your slop and you will enjoy it
- funkychicken 2y ago
  I actually felt bad for the poor bot :(
- zombiwoof 2y ago
  AI can’t do summaries but let’s unleash it on our military. Makes sense
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  AI has become political and Google is a very political company nowadays, i wouldn’t take this at face value
- weikju 2y ago
  > I thought summarization was a task AI was considered good at. I found this article was a good explanation why this isn’t the case: https://ea.rna.nl/2024/05/27/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actually-does-nothing-of-the-kind/ https://ea.rna.nl/2024/05/27/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actu... TLDR: it all comes back to the same principle: LLMs are predicting words based on their training. Which means they are not actually summarizing ideas from documents (or whatever other task we give them).
rl3 2y ago
Microsoft interestingly enough appears to be standing their ground on DEI. [0] Yet, they hopped on the layoff train this time around with a particularly nasty twist. [1] Perhaps they were afraid they'd need to be sociopathic in at least one regard, lest they buck the wider ethos lately. Facebook for example, offered generous severance packages but threw DEI in the trash immediately. [2] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/business/dei-programs-initiatives-costco-microsoft.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/business/dei-programs-ini... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-performance-based-job-cuts-have-started-termination-letters-2025-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-performance-based-... [2] https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/laid-off-meta-employees-blast-zuckerberg-tech-parental-leave/?itm_source=parsely-api https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/laid-off-meta-employees-blast...
- relaxing 2y ago
  Healthcare and salary stops when your employment is terminated? Damn, next you’ll tell me ex-Microsofties are shut out of the free drinks cooler.
- tadfisher 2y ago
  That is nothing new for Microsoft. I don't think they invented stack-ranking, but they were doing it basically from the 90s until Ballmer left. That's where you're required to cut the bottom 20% of your team every year.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    When MSFT did stack ranking officially, the buckets were 20% "overachievers", 70% "achievers", and 10% "underachievers", with the latter being targeted for cuts. If I remember correctly, these specific numbers originated at GE.
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  Companies with strong DEI programs most certainly have an authoritarian leadership style and for Microsoft that certainly is the case. As DEI sees itself as better to determine who needs discrimination, so does Microsoft leadership. It is not much more complicated than that and fits the picture. A company with a long history of policies to not enable people to be more independent.
zombiwoof 2y ago
[flagged]
user14159265 2y ago
This is also a rug pull for many international researchers working at google. How should they feel helping to build weapon systems for a country that openly threatens their home countries or close allies? If google didn't start with "don't be evil" and didn't continue to pledge not use use AI for weapons, this would be different. This is as bad as having an "Open" for-profit company. Let's see which of the big labs remain attractive non-US citizens.
- tim333 2y ago
  The no weapons thing was fine for years but now you've got Putin sending thousands to troops Europwards there's an argument for using tech to stop that. Also detering the Chinese who will no doubt develop AI weapons themselves.
jdlyga 2y ago
DEI will be back under a different name because it's a problem that needs to be solved. It's like the huge backlash against affirmative action.
- trhway 2y ago
  Solution of a problem starts from stating and understanding of the problem. The DEI statement and understanding of the problem was alike USSR’s “we have too many Jews in the University” and thus similar result.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  The problem needs to be solved earlier along the chain than hiring. At education and marketing for education ideally. Companies should hire the best, but schools should be starting everyone off on the right track and the rest should work out.
  - aisenik 2y ago
    This started as admonishment: that diversity, equity, and inclusion is an existing and important aspect of our education system that is being actively and unconstitutionally destroyed. It became something more, because the crisis we face if we allow the current situation to proceed is much greater than the degradation of our education->corporation pipeline. The people that are reimplementing Jim Crow apartheid in America under the guise of protecting us from diversity, equity, and inclusion are the same people who have been actively undermining the education system in America, from banning accepted science such as evolution to clever extortion schemes diverting collective funds from public education to private religious/ideological indoctrination. As part of the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion from American society, Trump has mandated that schools teach a false version of American history that forbids acknowledging that the USA has ever done racist things. They are currently working to completely eliminate the Department of Education. Meanwhile, in between threatening to arrest congresspeople, commentators, and journalists for clear first-amendment-protected speech and retweeting literal white supremacist propaganda, Elon Musk is guiding his strike team of blackhats and/or neonazis to completely purge the government of patriotic workers and destroy its ability to do anything but wage offensive wars and enforce the radical puritanical mores of millenarian "Christian" sects. The American people (and indeed, citizens of the developed world) currently exist in a hyperreality that requires self-deprivation to clear the fog of algorithmic far-right radicalization employed by our media companies social and traditional. We suck at that. The history of countries in analogous situations is bleak: we are rapidly approaching moral oblivion. There is not a human in this world who will remain unscathed by the devastation we unleash.
kbrannigan 2y ago
For Many people on Hacker News, DEI has become synonymous with unqualification, implying that if a non‑white person works at a company, they're only there because of these programs, and are taking opportunities away from more qualified white men. In their view, these employees don't truly deserve their positions.
- happytoexplain 2y ago
  This is an exaggeration - a bad faith interpretation based on the most extreme opinions (unless you are defining "many" relatively - i.e. if 10 out of 100 people in a room are openly racist, that's "many" by colloquial usage, because being openly racist is so dramatic, not because 10% is an intrinsically big number).
arkwin 2y ago
To the people defending the reduction in Google's DEI program, I want to tell you that you are missing the point. For some reason, they think DEI means some unqualified woman or minority is taking the position over someone more qualified. That is not the case. DEI was created because corporate leadership structures were "the good old boys club" where less qualified people were hired because they knew someone or were related to someone in the company over a more qualified candidate. Still today, qualified job candidates do not get calls back because their name sounds foreign. [1, 2] There are many reasons why qualified candidates cannot even get into the interview process. [1] https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1243713272/resume-bias-study-white-names-black-names https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1243713272/resume-bias-study-... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/23/516823230/asian-last-names-lead-to-fewer-job-interviews-still https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/23/516823230...
- happytoexplain 2y ago
  In theory, I'm a proponent of DEI. But your description is every description: "People have bias when hiring." That's the easy part to explain. A clear summary of how the solution can be fair is never quite spelled out (either because it isn't fair, or because explaining it clearly and briefly is intractable). "The fair amount of each of type person" is impossible to define, so there's no way to fairly get us there. I.e. we can demonstrate that the scale is unfair, but we can't measure exactly how. The results of the bias are apparent, but the bias itself is unobservable. But when we put a thumb on it, that's highly observable, and we know the thumb doesn't know exactly whom to prefer over whom. You can't possibly expect humans to not revolt against that. More practically speaking: Yes, the loud assholes focus on unqualified people theoretically being hired, but even if you dismiss them, there are still a bunch of people who won't be able to ignore the fact that, while DEI will cause the best candidate to sometimes be hired when they otherwise wouldn't, it intuitively causes the still-qualified-but-not-as-qualified candidate to be hired at least as often. Additionally, being denied by human bias (unconscious bias, charitably) is less angering than being denied by policy.
penguin_booze 2y ago
cuius regio eius religio - that's all there's to it.
dr_dshiv 2y ago
Instead of DEI, why not formal reparations for slavery? Done in the form of a bank, it could be pretty powerful.
- Yossarrian22 2y ago
  Who should qualify? Do we go by a one-drop rule, if so what percentage of the population are we talking here? Do you have to prove that one drop came from slaves in the United States of America(e.g. "Based on best records available your one drop likely came from slaves in Bermuda no reparations for you")? And finally how should this be funded? Should people who immigrated or whose families immigrated to America after slavery was abolished be taxed also?
  - dr_dshiv 2y ago
    That’s right. It’s about American slaveholders. So you’d have to prove a direct descendant was a slave. Then there’d be the capitalization of the bank. Could probably be structured as a loan. And yes, everyone would indirectly be taxed for slavery reparations.

94 points by belter 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43029086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43029086

belter 2y ago

https://archive.is/3FGOH https://archive.is/3FGOH

AlexErrant 2y ago

Of particular note: > Parker said that, as a federal contractor, the company has been reviewing all of its programs and initiatives in response to Donald Trump’s executive orders that direct federal agencies and contractors to dismantle DEI work.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

> “What’s not changing is we’ve always hired the best person for the job,” she said, according to a recording of the meeting the Guardian reviewed. This is obviously a lie. Google’s more senior leaders had (and probably still have) quotas for hiring and promotions. If you didn’t hit quotas, not only did you face intense pressure to artificially skew things when HR reviewed numbers, but your performance (and compensation) would also be affected. Many people have privately talked about this, but most are afraid to speak up, due to the aggression of the progressive employees and the official DEI machine (from HR). I wonder if Sundar will be brave enough to admit fault in how they handled the past, instead of just pretending nothing is changing. I am reminded of James Damore’s situation - he discussed something controversial in a polite way, with sources backing up his ideas, but was viciously attacked inside Google and also outside. News media regularly misrepresented what he said. His firing was unfair. That was just one example of how the company operated all this time. If that’s changing, they should own up to it.

malcolmgreaves 2y ago
These quotas you speak of do not and have never existed. James was a below average engineer who wanted the special treatment of his daddy’s generation.
- Larrikin 2y ago
  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna835836 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna835836 Seems like his firing was completely justified. But is also a knock against Google for hiring him in the first place.
  - gotoeleven 2y ago
    You know neuroticism is a term of art in psychology, right? It's a value neutral term, not a pejorative. If your argument is that he deserves firing because he's sexist and your evidence that he's sexist is he called women neurotic then you're part of the reason we can't have reasoned debates.
    - pfisherman 2y ago
      You can argue until you are blue in the face that people should not have interpreted what he wrote as offensive. But in fact a very large number of people did.
  - pfisherman 2y ago
    I dunno. Could be that the hiring practices at the time, or the team that interviewed him vetted algorithmic problem solving skill and did not run a vibe check on social or emotional intelligence. Because blasting out a company wide post / email disparaging and entire class of people (who are like 50 percent of the population), and then getting indignant about the entirely foreseeable backlash is indicative of extremely low EQ.
- gotoeleven 2y ago
  What special treatment did he want?

miohtama 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deideiohthatdei 2y ago
[flagged]
- pell 2y ago
  I think it's definitely helpful to describe a source's political leaning to add context to a discussion. However, claiming that they generally "hate big tech, love DEI" seems a little disingenuous. I think, HN is best when it's nuanced and does not jump and feed on hyperbolic culture war topics primarily used as ragebait. There surely are many articles supportive of diversity initiatives published by the Guardian. But they have also published critical and nuanced articles on the subject. Here are a two examples: "Focusing on diversity means we miss the big picture. It’s class that shapes our lives" -> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/29/focusing-on-diversity-means-we-miss-the-big-picture-its-class-that-shapes-our-lives https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/29/focusi... "So your company uses diversity training. Does it even work?" -> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/workplace-diversity-training-does-it-work-racial-justice https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/workplace-dive...
- ddq 2y ago
  It's funny that this could be interpreted as either far left (the biases against marginalized people need to be heavily counteracted in order for them to succeed) or far right (without DEI they would be unable to succeed on their own merits because they are less able than the typical white male straight christians). What it can't be interpreted as is reasonable. It's insulting no matter how you look at it, either paternalistic or white supremecist. Saying that everyone who isn't of certain skin color, gender, religion, or orientation is "fucked" without relatively recent HR initiatives is on its face ridiculous and insulting to those who have succeeded without it, which is the vast majority of them! Probably not what you actually meant but this whole topic seems so ridiculously polarized that people will post those type of extemist interpretations without a second thought. e: ah, just looked at the username and account creation date. I'm now rescinding my assumption of good faith intent.

oulipo 2y ago

Shameful

frognumber 2y ago

I usually evaluate people based on how they behave by their own stated values and codes. It's been a good rule. What's been amazing to me is how skin-deep the stated values across the tech industry were. Virtually every executive is behaving in ways they would fire their employees for just a few months ago. The executives have no moral compass as human beings. I believed this to be the case before, since the people I've interacted with who rose that high did so by being psychopaths, but what's amazing is how on display it is. I don't mind the before or the after so much as the very, very transparent about-face.

Analemma_ 2y ago
It's more-or-less impossible to become a sufficiently-senior executive at a sufficiently-large company without being a psychopath. You should have a baseline assumption that all executives at large corporations have no values whatsoever beyond doing what benefits them personally, you'll be a lot less surprised at their behavior if you do.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  What about large tech funding orgs? ;-)
  - frognumber 2y ago
    Depends on how they got there. It's in the selection process. Anything with competition about 1000:1 leads to cheating and psychopathic behavior. Anything below 1:4 doesn't. Iterated 1:4 does again.
- frognumber 2y ago
  That's generally my assumption, but with some exceptions. What selects for psychopaths is the process of climbing the corporate ladder. However, there are ways to get to the top of the corporate ladder without climbing it. For example, Larry and Sergei didn't seem like psychopaths. Neither did Omar Bose. Many other founders aren't. Ditto for most processes with extreme selective pressures (e.g. most senator, PoTUS, many elite academics, elite law firm partner, etc.). People win by optimizing to the process. People with ethics, or who don't cheat, don't win. There are exceptions, but they're in the minority. For example, if you are an extreme genius or stumble on a major breakthrough, in science, and don't have it stolen by a psychopath. You got downvoted, so I'll provide two references: * Power by Pfeffer * Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita Very different takes, but same general conclusion. Both are respected academics at Stanford and NYU, respectively, with de Mesquita being far more respected, and an excellent read. Power is a bit less so

JCM9 2y ago

The AI items are concerning. The DEI stuff though is gone and isn’t coming back. The concept was well intentioned but, quite ironically, these programs turned into a hub of biased discriminatory behavior and it was becoming increasingly hard to paint them as anything else.

RustySpottedCat 2y ago
There was a zero chance the company with the best AI LLM models would not get involved in weaponization, willingly or not. DAI is going to be one of the first things the next administration brings back, mark my words. Saying it's discriminatory is like saying affirmative action is discriminatory
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  my guess is any new administration would realize it’s a massive political loser. i’m personally in favor of some limited AA in unis, but if even black people are majority against AA when polled… it’s definitely not coming back. might be that this changes once minority groups realize how much of an impact it was actually having, i think a large segment of people convinced themselves that a lot more of these admissions were by pure merit than is supported by the data.
  - Aachen 2y ago
    What's an aa? I get American Airlines when I duck it and I know of libaa but that doesn't fit the context either
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      affirmative action. you can also generally just copy and paste into chatgpt and it will be able to answer your question
      - Aachen 2y ago
        (And burn a tree in the process as compared to a human answer) Thanks for clarifying!

knallfrosch 2y ago

I always wonder how they do it. These spineless corporate suits. One month they're shoving DEI down your throat ("underrepresented, marginalized"), next month they're killing these programs and writing that they have always hired the "best" people for the job. Obviously, some people of the organization are different, but not all. How do they do it? Just treat it like a job and do whatever the bag full of money demands? Or do they double-think like in 1984 and convince themselves that they themselves also believe it?

Jensson 2y ago
How did democrat politicians go from saying we shouldn't legalize gay marriage to then saying you are a horrible homophobe if you are against it in a couple of years? The answer is the same, some people just say what they think will give them the most power and advantages. If denying gay rights gives them votes? "Of course they shouldn't have any!" Wait, no, gay rights give votes?? "Oh, yeah anyone who doesn't give them rights is the worst!" Almost all leaders are like that in a large enough population, since if you say what people want to hear you tend to bubble upwards.
- sympil 2y ago
  In 2004 John Kerry lost the election due to two things. One of them was his support for gay marriage being legal. Stupid commericals like this one were made: https://youtu.be/4AzLrn5JVIo?si=bYtAbriIbp0AVrxP https://youtu.be/4AzLrn5JVIo?si=bYtAbriIbp0AVrxP Obama was adamant that he did not support legislation to legalize gay marriage. When SCOTUS legalized it he was caught off guard but he and other Democrats were able to then fully embrace the issue. The nation’s view on the topic rapidly changed and now it is a nonissue for most Republicans.
  - rat87 2y ago
    John Kerry was for civil unions and against gay marriage in 2004. Not saying that position or what people claimed or thought his opinion was didn't effect it but he didn't come out pro gay marriage until much later. Is say the swift boat thing and the flip flop accusations are what hurt him Also many Republicans are still very anti gay marriage

rkagerer 2y ago

Google used AI to summarize the ~200 questions its employees posed ahead of this meeting regarding its DEI and AI policies. The final two paragraphs of the article are telling: The third-most-popular question employees asked was why the AI summaries were so bad. “The AI summaries of questions on Ask are terrible. Can we go back to answering the questions people actually asked?” it read. I thought summarization was a task AI was considered good at. If their own tech sucks at this, what makes us think it's safe to use in the context of war?

kotaKat 2y ago
What, Googlers don't like AI summaries shoved down their throat? Too bad, it's a feature, and features can't be disabled! :)
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  You will eat your slop and you will enjoy it
funkychicken 2y ago
I actually felt bad for the poor bot :(
zombiwoof 2y ago
AI can’t do summaries but let’s unleash it on our military. Makes sense
whimsicalism 2y ago
AI has become political and Google is a very political company nowadays, i wouldn’t take this at face value
weikju 2y ago
> I thought summarization was a task AI was considered good at. I found this article was a good explanation why this isn’t the case: https://ea.rna.nl/2024/05/27/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actually-does-nothing-of-the-kind/ https://ea.rna.nl/2024/05/27/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actu... TLDR: it all comes back to the same principle: LLMs are predicting words based on their training. Which means they are not actually summarizing ideas from documents (or whatever other task we give them).

rl3 2y ago

Microsoft interestingly enough appears to be standing their ground on DEI. [0] Yet, they hopped on the layoff train this time around with a particularly nasty twist. [1] Perhaps they were afraid they'd need to be sociopathic in at least one regard, lest they buck the wider ethos lately. Facebook for example, offered generous severance packages but threw DEI in the trash immediately. [2] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/business/dei-programs-initiatives-costco-microsoft.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/business/dei-programs-ini... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-performance-based-job-cuts-have-started-termination-letters-2025-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-performance-based-... [2] https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/laid-off-meta-employees-blast-zuckerberg-tech-parental-leave/?itm_source=parsely-api https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/laid-off-meta-employees-blast...

relaxing 2y ago
Healthcare and salary stops when your employment is terminated? Damn, next you’ll tell me ex-Microsofties are shut out of the free drinks cooler.
tadfisher 2y ago
That is nothing new for Microsoft. I don't think they invented stack-ranking, but they were doing it basically from the 90s until Ballmer left. That's where you're required to cut the bottom 20% of your team every year.
- int_19h 2y ago
  When MSFT did stack ranking officially, the buckets were 20% "overachievers", 70% "achievers", and 10% "underachievers", with the latter being targeted for cuts. If I remember correctly, these specific numbers originated at GE.
raxxorraxor 2y ago
Companies with strong DEI programs most certainly have an authoritarian leadership style and for Microsoft that certainly is the case. As DEI sees itself as better to determine who needs discrimination, so does Microsoft leadership. It is not much more complicated than that and fits the picture. A company with a long history of policies to not enable people to be more independent.

zombiwoof 2y ago

[flagged]

user14159265 2y ago

This is also a rug pull for many international researchers working at google. How should they feel helping to build weapon systems for a country that openly threatens their home countries or close allies? If google didn't start with "don't be evil" and didn't continue to pledge not use use AI for weapons, this would be different. This is as bad as having an "Open" for-profit company. Let's see which of the big labs remain attractive non-US citizens.

tim333 2y ago
The no weapons thing was fine for years but now you've got Putin sending thousands to troops Europwards there's an argument for using tech to stop that. Also detering the Chinese who will no doubt develop AI weapons themselves.

jdlyga 2y ago

DEI will be back under a different name because it's a problem that needs to be solved. It's like the huge backlash against affirmative action.

trhway 2y ago
Solution of a problem starts from stating and understanding of the problem. The DEI statement and understanding of the problem was alike USSR’s “we have too many Jews in the University” and thus similar result.
Gigachad 2y ago
The problem needs to be solved earlier along the chain than hiring. At education and marketing for education ideally. Companies should hire the best, but schools should be starting everyone off on the right track and the rest should work out.
- aisenik 2y ago
  This started as admonishment: that diversity, equity, and inclusion is an existing and important aspect of our education system that is being actively and unconstitutionally destroyed. It became something more, because the crisis we face if we allow the current situation to proceed is much greater than the degradation of our education->corporation pipeline. The people that are reimplementing Jim Crow apartheid in America under the guise of protecting us from diversity, equity, and inclusion are the same people who have been actively undermining the education system in America, from banning accepted science such as evolution to clever extortion schemes diverting collective funds from public education to private religious/ideological indoctrination. As part of the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion from American society, Trump has mandated that schools teach a false version of American history that forbids acknowledging that the USA has ever done racist things. They are currently working to completely eliminate the Department of Education. Meanwhile, in between threatening to arrest congresspeople, commentators, and journalists for clear first-amendment-protected speech and retweeting literal white supremacist propaganda, Elon Musk is guiding his strike team of blackhats and/or neonazis to completely purge the government of patriotic workers and destroy its ability to do anything but wage offensive wars and enforce the radical puritanical mores of millenarian "Christian" sects. The American people (and indeed, citizens of the developed world) currently exist in a hyperreality that requires self-deprivation to clear the fog of algorithmic far-right radicalization employed by our media companies social and traditional. We suck at that. The history of countries in analogous situations is bleak: we are rapidly approaching moral oblivion. There is not a human in this world who will remain unscathed by the devastation we unleash.

kbrannigan 2y ago

For Many people on Hacker News, DEI has become synonymous with unqualification, implying that if a non‑white person works at a company, they're only there because of these programs, and are taking opportunities away from more qualified white men. In their view, these employees don't truly deserve their positions.

happytoexplain 2y ago
This is an exaggeration - a bad faith interpretation based on the most extreme opinions (unless you are defining "many" relatively - i.e. if 10 out of 100 people in a room are openly racist, that's "many" by colloquial usage, because being openly racist is so dramatic, not because 10% is an intrinsically big number).

arkwin 2y ago

To the people defending the reduction in Google's DEI program, I want to tell you that you are missing the point. For some reason, they think DEI means some unqualified woman or minority is taking the position over someone more qualified. That is not the case. DEI was created because corporate leadership structures were "the good old boys club" where less qualified people were hired because they knew someone or were related to someone in the company over a more qualified candidate. Still today, qualified job candidates do not get calls back because their name sounds foreign. [1, 2] There are many reasons why qualified candidates cannot even get into the interview process. [1] https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1243713272/resume-bias-study-white-names-black-names https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1243713272/resume-bias-study-... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/23/516823230/asian-last-names-lead-to-fewer-job-interviews-still https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/23/516823230...

happytoexplain 2y ago
In theory, I'm a proponent of DEI. But your description is every description: "People have bias when hiring." That's the easy part to explain. A clear summary of how the solution can be fair is never quite spelled out (either because it isn't fair, or because explaining it clearly and briefly is intractable). "The fair amount of each of type person" is impossible to define, so there's no way to fairly get us there. I.e. we can demonstrate that the scale is unfair, but we can't measure exactly how. The results of the bias are apparent, but the bias itself is unobservable. But when we put a thumb on it, that's highly observable, and we know the thumb doesn't know exactly whom to prefer over whom. You can't possibly expect humans to not revolt against that. More practically speaking: Yes, the loud assholes focus on unqualified people theoretically being hired, but even if you dismiss them, there are still a bunch of people who won't be able to ignore the fact that, while DEI will cause the best candidate to sometimes be hired when they otherwise wouldn't, it intuitively causes the still-qualified-but-not-as-qualified candidate to be hired at least as often. Additionally, being denied by human bias (unconscious bias, charitably) is less angering than being denied by policy.

penguin_booze 2y ago

cuius regio eius religio - that's all there's to it.

dr_dshiv 2y ago

Instead of DEI, why not formal reparations for slavery? Done in the form of a bank, it could be pretty powerful.

Yossarrian22 2y ago
Who should qualify? Do we go by a one-drop rule, if so what percentage of the population are we talking here? Do you have to prove that one drop came from slaves in the United States of America(e.g. "Based on best records available your one drop likely came from slaves in Bermuda no reparations for you")? And finally how should this be funded? Should people who immigrated or whose families immigrated to America after slavery was abolished be taxed also?
- dr_dshiv 2y ago
  That’s right. It’s about American slaveholders. So you’d have to prove a direct descendant was a slave. Then there’d be the capitalization of the bank. Could probably be structured as a loan. And yes, everyone would indirectly be taxed for slavery reparations.