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Comment by itg | Hacker News Reader

"“There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs,” wrote Courtney Hohne, a director of communications at Google and the spokeswoman for Google X. Hohne went on to ask her colleagues to “distance X from this video,” and wrote, “we don’t want to trigger a whole separate media cycle about where BD really is at Google.” “We’re not going to comment on this video because there’s really not a lot we can add, and we don’t want to answer most of the Qs it triggers,” she wrote."

I found this to be disappointing. More concerned about their brand image than trying to push robotics research forward.

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> I found this to be disappointing. More concerned about their brand image than trying to push robotics research forward.

This is a director of communications we are talking about. Literally the beginning, middle, and end of her job description is "Consider our brand image." If she sounds overly concerned about Google X's brand image, that's because it's her job. Google pays her so that the rest of their employees don't have to be so concerned.

Basically every company on the planet with more than 20 people in it has someone making strategic decisions like this. The only difference here is we have a whistleblower reporting what she says internally. There's just about zero to learn about Google's priorities from her priorities, except that none of her immediate superiors is banging the drum for a PR battle over DoD robots.

I guess it's her job then to know that this kind of attitude is disappointing, isn't it?

This wasn't a public statement. It was an email to colleagues.

"Let's not comment" is, I think, the default position of PR departments everywhere on everything unless there is a crisis or a marketing campaign going on. Throwing fuel on a fire isn't wise unless you want there to be a fire.

This is incredibly disappointing to read. If they can't deal with the cultural repercussions of what they're building, then they're right, they need to get out of that game. Let someone else take the robotics helm

Given that Courtney is the Director of Communications, she may be overly focused on her own position's perspective on the news.

Yes, and when a person like that is calling the shots on strategy, the song is over. Companies lead from the PR department are on trajectory to crater.

Is she calling the shots? I took it to mean she was superciliously talking out of her ass to the reporter.

Especially since she wasn't talking to the reporter. This was leaked internal emails. She was doing her job, inside Google.

Ahh.

Still, we don't have the actual context: this could just be a department head bloviating on a thread she probably shouldn't have been included on in the first place.

Especially since the robots that BD is making are prohibitively expensive, and will remain that way for several years. If anything is going to take away human jobs, it's the software at the core of Google's business, which costs nothing to deploy and is inherently better than humans... Unlike robots that cost more than a typical human makes in their lifetime and are only now beginning to gain proper mobility.

If anything, the real concerns about their research should be their ties to the DoD and the military use of robots.

One of Ray Kurzweil's predictions is that the exponential growth of technology is really going to surprise a lot of people when we start hitting the hockey growth phase. What looks to be 20 years out may be getting solved in 2 or 3 years, or even sooner. Perhaps google is making such progress in AI, they sense the public may turn against them if they have both AI and robots. I'm probably wrong, but just a theory. Kurzweil does work for Google by the way.

The thing about smooth exponentials is that "hocky stick growth" is always 5-10 years away.

Real world exponentials are not necessarily smooth.

But if it is actually an exponential than the upswing is aberrational.

Alternatively, you are always hitting the hockey-stick of 5-10 years ago.

While Kurzweil generates predictions which are bold and falsifiable, there's an unfortunate tendency: The bold ones are not falsifiable, and the falsifiable ones are not bold.

every phase of an exponential curve is hockey stick shaped, thats what defines it as a thing.

Not just brand image, but actual customer decisions in the market. Look at how the self-driving car has evolved to look more friendly, for no technical reason, so the public doesn't resist it.

It's arrogant to push something forward in the face of widespread opposition, instead of finding an agreeable way forward.

Good for everyone else. This is exactly how startups get their opportunities. There's always a bigger, better company that can do what you want to do right now but won't.

I think it was just an excuse used as a cover-up. Sounds like cultural issues were at play with the split.

Perhaps there's a strong correlation between the people that get terrified by automation and the people that click ads.

Maybe, but does anyone think about the ad-buying system that they are supporting before they click on an ad? Personally, I doubt that ethical consumerism runs that deep.

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