Yesterday I was proudly told by a senior academic now a senior researcher at #Google #Deepmind that they are hiring more philosophers and ethicists.
This is a BAD THING. Settingaside teh fact that these are insecure jobs since corporations may change their mind about this direction on a whim, and only have the thinnest veneer of #AcademicFreedom, this is a further example of the privatisation of the #PublicRealm
(1/)
Globally there is a funding crisis for #HigherEducation especialy in not directly vocational areas. The job market is ridiculous in my discipline with 50-100 qualified applicants per post.
Google and its peers could pay more #Tax so that universities could employ more philosohers and ethicists.
Instead they are seizing teh opportunity to exploit the labour market and create private research institutes under their control.
(2/)
This effectively silences epistemically and institutionally authoritative voices which are critical of the business model, research direction, value alignment and general forcing of useless shit on us to keep their shareholders happy.
This subverts any genuine possibility of a collective, democratic, consensual defining of the good future. Instead, they ensure that THEIR vision of the future is hegemonic.
Those who can, must resist.
@tomstoneham
Paying tax is good and all, but the academics would be at the mercy of the politicians to allocate the tax correctly. This is not a healthy relationship. In Finland we pay high level of tax, and academicians are still struggling to make a living.
Alternatively they can directly fund universities/departments. This of course can create conflict of interest if the universities try to force researchers to lean towards the BigTech-friendly outcomes, but transparency reports can help.
@tomstoneham
I also believe that the main source of income should be tax, but at the same time industry should be able to fund certain fields of research that is relevant to their industry. Of course, in ethics field, this is a bit of an issue as ethics is not directly used in R&D but imho needs to be involved and yet stay impartial and clean from bias.
What I'm trying to say is that relying on tax money or tuition fees are necessary but not a enough and industrial connections are also needed.
Tom Stoneham
Mehrad 
