I find the term "ethics" has had its meaning warped lately, ironically for the purposes of "ethics-washing" which is what this article is claiming is happening when big corporations engage in AI ethics. When I worked at a FAANG company in the machine learning field, there was a group of people interested in ethics, but they never seemed to discuss different views on ethics. They often seemed to use the word as a tool to hide behind their collective action to force the company to change course.<p>For example this article says the following: "Members of Google’s Ethical AI team sent additional demands to Pichai, calling for policy changes, among other things.". If you look at these demands it includes the following:<p>* The dismissal of the company vice president.<p>* The reinstatement of Gebru at a higher level than she previously had.<p>The question as to whether these demands are ethical is not clear at all to me.<p>Another case in point, anecdotally I saw this a lot at the place I used to work, was the call for regulation to control AI research, and indeed this article talks about this in the section: "Scrap self-regulation". Taken from a different political perspective, someone might argue that giving more control to the state for the purpose of pursuing legitimised violence against AI researchers is unethical (note this is not my view it is an example). I saw people air views like this in the ethics discussions and given very unfavourable treatment, bordering on unethical.<p>It would be great if AI ethics was a field that produced solutions to problems such as verified datasets, best codes of practice and testing tools. Instead it just seems to be a way to highlight issues and advocate for political positions, which isn't in itself worthless but it feels like the first step in what should be a journey. Unfortunately highlighting problems is really easy, fixing them is the challenging part.<p>I often got the feeling that the people interested in this just cared about directing the labour of other people for their own interests, e.g. leading from behind rather than leading from the front. All seemed rather unethical to me.
This topic is interesting to me but it’s so hard to learn about. The reporting seems to have so much lack of detail it’s weird. It’s all summaries of statements without sources.<p>I understand that Gebru may feel dehumanized but without seeing the email that she references, it’s hard for me to understand her statement. If the CEO of Google painted her as “an angry black woman” then that’s a really big deal. If she feels that way, then that’s not as unique to me as people frequently feel upset and about ways that are unique to them, but not interesting to me.<p>Similarly with the fire/resign thing. These stories seem to all say “fire” even though that seems contested by Google for what happened. Without reading her actual ultimatum email then it’s hard for me to tell.<p>So it’s frustrating that what I want to know, these stories don’t cover. They are statements from Gebru that seem vague, easily substantiated, but not substantiated. So the articles seem to just focus on someone’s feelings.
Seems quite a deep review - but clearly takes a side from the get-go with little indication there are different perspectives on this issue (and no clear view as to exactly what happened yet to outsiders).<p>Articles like this would hold more power if the bias was removed or at least acknowledged with pointers to alternative takes.
Am I wrong or is the very first sentence of this article factually incorrect?<p>I understand that Google accepted her resignation in the letter, and did not fire her outright.
The level of misinformation here is astonishing. Blocked and Reported did a deep dive on this recently with Ars Technica co-founder. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blocked-and-reported/id1504298199?i=1000502440747" rel="nofollow">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blocked-and-reported/i...</a><p>And by “misinformation” I mean it’s either in the podcast or in this article. You be the judge.
Google should close the "ethics" department and open another one dealing with etiquette. It seems we've lost our manners and need someone to help us find them again.<p>So sorry to see you go, "ethics", but we're just not ready for you yet. Perhaps someday when we're more evolved!8-))
That is one of the better articles I have read on Google’s ethical missteps (that are probably correct from hard-nosed business optimization).<p>We need government action to apply reasonable guardrails on the actions of the largest tech companies, a clear legal structure that puts society first and still allows growth and profits. I am a member of the Libertarian Party (recent, basically my disgust with the DNC and RNC), and I feel a bit like a hypocrite for taking a non-Libertarian view of the current situation with Google and Facebook.