Google plonks right-wing think tanker and defence drone mogul on AI ethics advisory board Google, keen to join the ranks of megabucks firms aiming to convince punters they take the immoral use of their tech seriously, has launched an ethics advisory council with what it terms "diverse" perspectives. The council includes the president of a controversial right-wing think tank and the boss of a drone company, and the …
People who delibrately peddle fake news - i.e. information that is provably false, and which has been debunked multiple times, in order to push a specific political agenda - are not "a diverse set of views". They are bollocks artist who will say whatever they need to, even making shit up, in order to push their agenda.
There are plenty of conservative voices out there that are reasonable and balanced and who would have provided considered thoughtful input to an ethics committee. The chosen muppet is the anti-thesis of this.
People who delibrately peddle fake news - i.e. information that is provably false, and which has been debunked multiple times, in order to push a specific political agenda - are not "a diverse set of views".
which is, no doubt, why the Guardian circulation has to be propped up by the BBC. It keeps the bubble air tight.
Unless we believe that only people with one specific minority view of left-wing liberal intelligencia
Yup, which is why ethics is really just a county full of romantically casual girls and orange blokes near the sea. There's no view on anything that everyone agrees is ethical. One mans ethical view is an others unethical view.
Lovely soundbite, but won't work in the real world.
The problem is the starting point, i.e. the complete focus on profit. This is unethical - not "making a profit", necessarily, but being focused on nothing else. Once that has become the mindset, then nothing truly ethical can ever come out of such a company since there is nothing it won't do to make more money. Alphabet are just putting lipstick on a turd. However, a balanced ethics committee always has as broad a range of opinions as can be managed, so there is some small hope that it will be somewhat effective.
Many think companies have ethics but that is only allowed when the company is privately owned, or non-profit or isn't a company at all but instead a political or religious organization.
Ethics are not allowed to interfere with profit. Companies have one and only one reason to exist, profit, that's their responsibility to investors. IT can be hidden behind window dressing of many different kinds but only if those dressings and it's image help generate profits.
Ethics are for people and their representatives who enforce those ethics on companies by removing all profits from unethical behaviours.
Today there is little effective enforcement of ethics. laws or even national interests. Jail for board members is almost unheard of and fines even in the billions are little more than expenses.
That has been on display post 2008 but it has been that way for a very long line. Companies are now expected to ethicwash and done well it will make them appear ethical. But their only purpose is profit at any cost to anyone else, that cannot change when it is their only reason to exist.
Does it really matter if those doing the ethicwashing are left or right politically? Both have the same objectives if they answer to shareholders. Referencing political leanings appears to be click bait and distraction, meant to trigger rather than reveal. To generate reads and responses, well I guess that works so it does matter depending on the reason for being.
"Ethics are not allowed to interfere with profit."
This is a very serious oversimplification and as such, isn't true as a blanket statement. What is true is that corporations have to adhere to their charter, and not all private corporations have "profit at all costs" as their charter. If that were true, all corporations would switch to selling porn and drugs.
"Many think companies have ethics but that is only allowed when the company is privately owned, or non-profit or isn't a company at all but instead a political or religious organization."
If only. Any organization that does not believe, or care, that they have to answer to another has to make a unconscious effort to be/remain ethical. Why do you think companies and governments have ethics committees? Hint, it is not because they are ethical.
The board is just there to keep up appearances, so it doesn't really matter who is on it or what their views are. They aren't there to actually call Google out on anything, but to allow Google's CEO to say "this project passed our ethics board" when their next evil deed is discovered.
Sorry that some people are so religiously fanatic that they resort to histrionics -- or take to "social media" -- at any hint of disagreement with their unreasoned views based on the divine revelation that is Twitter. Get those stakes and pyres ready! There is a Foreign Thought among us!
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Well, Google needs someone on its AI ethics board that will tell them it's unethical to use AI to skew search results so as to convince everyone that Trump is the spawn of the devil. Because apparently while they never did that, some of their employees were considering that as being an appropriate manifestation of corporate responsibility.
So the question really is how Google will listen to this board. If it doesn't do anything that at least some of the board members object to, fine. If it feels it's OK to do anything the whole board hasn't agreed to is wrong, then we're in trouble.
>> which has come under fire for spreading misinformation about climate change.
Typical lefty jargon... having different opinion equals "misinformation" equals a single trip to Siberia (in the golden days of leftism in Russia).
After having been infested by the lefty fifth column so badly, it is understandable Google wants more diversity in its advisory board.
I think that AI doesn't exist, if by AI people mean "artificial intelligence". Current AI systems are very powerful, but they're still just pattern-matching systems that don't engage in anything that resembles intelligent thought.
Talk to NIST TREC? They clearly said that AI should be able to answer both Factoid and Definition (Other) questions. Those "just pattern-matching systems" you're talking about can. Consider them AI or no is rather a rhetorical question.
I'm not sure what NIST TREC's opinion has to do with anything. A system that can answer such questions doesn't, all by itself, imply that there's intelligence going on.
> Consider them AI or no is rather a rhetorical question.
Yes, it has to be, since we don't have anything close to a good definition of "intelligence". As such, any declaration (including my own) of what does or does not qualify as intelligent is necessary rhetorical. "Is it intelligent" is an impossible question to answer until everyone can agree on what intelligence actually is. And there is no broad agreement about that.
Such an answer implies knowledge and understanding of a question's context and subtext, which was not possible before I patented.
1) The context is obtained by AI-parsing, which opposes n-gram parsing.
2) A word's subtext is its dictionary definition. Also, other explanatory texts are its subtexts. (See Merriam Webster? Or Oxford?)
--------
My formulation: "Intelligence is the process of becoming better, where the best is the limit." That is, I apply Differential Analysis.
Why?
There are two sentences
-Alice.
-Alice dances, jests and rejoices.
The first - one word which means everything and nothing. The second - three phrases, .(3) each.
I think this is Differential Linguistic, the second sentence becomes the first (process). By analogy I decided that intellect also has the same differential nature/ is a process.
...they might have included these contrarians to keep the "ethics experts" from addressing silly, unrealistic scenarios, to keep them focused on what the industry is actually doing.
"Yeah, we know that making a T-1000 or an ED-209 would be a bad move, but let's address the issues involved in dealing with the things we can ACTUALLY build in the near future. It also might be nice to look at what other countries are working on right now, instead of going on and on about the US military-industrial-academic complex and how awful it is."
... the ''don't be evil' policy in April/May last year, they were simply clearing the decks for little numbers like this.
In the near future they'll be hosting death camps, organising whale hunts and lauding child molesters as they take us into their glorious future.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/27/artificial-intelligence-pioneers-win-turing-award/?utm_term=.89e9b4764f8c
"The Turing Award comes with a $1 million prize, funded by Google"
"Artificial-intelligence pioneers win $1 million Turing Award"
"The researchers, working both independently and together, helped advance the thinking and application of neural networks, the technology that gives computers the ability to recognize patterns, interpret language and glean insights from complex data."
I patented this all! What ethics?
"Hinton is a vice president and engineering fellow at Google."
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