Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)"The trusted internet-search giant is providing low-quality information in a race to keep up with the competition," --- this phrasing makes it starkly clear that it's a race to nowhere good.
From @daveyalba
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“The group working on ethics that Google pledged to fortify is now disempowered and demoralized, the current and former workers said.”
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Google’s leaders decided that as long as it called new products “experiments,” the public might forgive their shortcomings, the employees said.
➡️We don’t tolerate “experiments” that pollute the natural ecosystem and we shouldn’t tolerate those that pollute the information ecosystem either.
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“Silicon Valley as a whole is still wrestling with how to reconcile competitive pressures with safety.”
➡️Are they though? It seems to me that those in charge (i.e. VCs and C-suite execs) are really only interested in competition (for $$).
“But ChatGPT’s remarkable debut meant that by early this year, there was no turning back.”
➡️False. We turned back from lead in gasoline. We turned back from ozone-destroying CFCs. We can turn back from text synthesis machines.
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“On the same day, [Google] announced that it would be weaving generative AI into its health-care offerings.”
➡️ 🚨🚨🚨
“Employees say they’re concerned that the speed of development is not allowing enough time to study potential harms.”
➡️Employees are correct.
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“One former employee said they asked to work on fairness in machine learning and they were routinely discouraged — to the point that it affected their performance review.”
➡️Not a good look, Google.
“But now that the priority is releasing generative AI products above all, ethics employees said it’s become futile to speak up.”
➡️And it shows…
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“When Google’s management does grapple with ethics concerns publicly, they tend to speak about hypothetical future scenarios about an all-powerful technology that cannot be controlled by human beings”
➡️So tempting to focus on fictional future harms rather than current real ones.
Thank you, @daveyalba for this reporting.
Arcane SciencesIf they shift the focus to an all-powerful technology that cannot be controlled by human beings, it's easier to distract from the truth - a flawed, specialized technology with applications that are mostly undesirable, controlled by a clique of privileged and disconnected tech oligarchs.
This will not end well.
Thanks @daveyalba for the article. Not much here is surprising, but it sure is disheartening.
chmps@emilymbender @daveyalba Pichai's swan song is just bizarre. If AI harms are there, isn't is Google's responsibility to fix it? He's not some underfunded NGO but the chief of one of the wealthiest corporations in human history.
The Doctor@chmps @emilymbender @[email protected] They do not care one bit.
If you look at it though the lens of "the folks who make the big decisions never once think about potential harm," every last thing makes sense.
We need to stop asking "Why don't they do anything?" and start asking "What do/we/ start doing right now about it?"
wobweger 