"Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/technology/ai-google-chatbot-engineer-quits-hinton.html
Many women from Google who were pushed out and/or left have commented with agreement and frustration at Hinton's statements after departing Google. As @Mer__edith has written:
"Where were these guys when we spent months + thousand$ on lawyers? Where were they when we were organizing to stop it before it reached this point? Where were they when Sundar lied about us & diminished the risks we demonstrated? I'm not interested in dissent without solidarity."
“Where were these guys when we spent months + thousand$ on lawyers? Where were they when we were organizing to stop it before it reached this point? Where were they when Sundar lied about us & diminished the risks we demonstrated? I'm not interested in dissent without solidarity.”
Within tech, there's a script of (especially) men seeking fame from hyping a system to gain resources/power, then warning people about its dangers once they face criticism over the dangers.
Back in (checks) 2019, I called this the "evilbrag":
When a powerful man makes a hairshirt apology in a national magazine, to manage reputational risks and also acquire even more resources, even though they helped create the problem in the first place.
It's like a humblebrag for the harms you caused
For some reason guys in tech who cause serious harms seem to only understand the idea of failing upward.
The public evilbrag is a basic stepping stone in that upward mobility.
@ntnsndr @natematias Perhaps this is a corollary to the classic "Stages of a Bubble". One might look at that and consider that those seen as Cassandras are those in the Stealth and Awareness phases.
So an "evilbrag" would be someone who goes public with their criticism during the Mania Phase, between Greed and Delusion. A bunch of people will then try to jump on the evilbrag bandwagon but they'll be too late.
https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter3/transportation-and-economic-development/bubble-stages/
J. Nathan Matias 🦣
Nathan Schneider
INVISV