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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

The thing I think everyone needs to remember for the future is that Google is only backing off on Maven because of the bad PR. They aren't suddenly growing a conscience, and you can be sure that given the chance to secretly get involved in a horribly unethical program for hundreds of millions of dollars is still definitely an option for them.

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Companies don't have consciences. "Bad PR," talent drain and other happenings led to this and for PEOPLE (who do have consciences), these can continue to be considered as valid tactics for achieving a desired end.

That may be a component, but IMHO, pronouncements and explanations haven't diminished employee objections to say the least.

Corporations have no ethics or morals, though. Google has no conscience of it's own. Employees can perhaps keep it in check, for a while. But the notion that people have held that Google is good for society is a myth, and people are increasingly realizing it.

Sure, employees may continue to protest actions like this in the future... if they find out about them. Bear in mind, a significant component of this incident involved Google lying and downplaying the importance of this project.

Shortly after yesterday's article containing leaked emails, a Googler expressed public shame of having promoted articles by one of the people in said emails, which explicitly talked about concealing Google's involvement with the military implementing AI, and shortly thereafter, announced intention to leave. This person had blocked me a mere couple months ago for saying that "Google is not worth saving", and today, perhaps they'd agree with me.

Eventually, Google will cross a line that everyone considers too far. For me, it was several years ago. For this individual, it was yesterday. How long will Google have people there who still object to the behavior the company engages in? Where's your line?

This is bigger than Google. Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Oracle, Palantir, et al, will take this contract next. Google isn't the only company that can run DNNs to do image classification, it's commodified now. The DoD is going to pay money to get this software, it's inevitable, just like they got the Hydrogen bomb, and ICBMs, and biological weapons. Enough people exist out there who are smart and willing to work on it for money, only it won't leak, and won't be public.

The public needs to take this event as a canary in the coal mine. Congress needs to limit AI use in the military. If it took Google to scare everyone into finally regulating this, than so be it, but there needs to be transparency and oversight and limits imposed by democracies on this, just like regulations on chemical and biological weapons.

Perhaps we need an "AI Weapons Proliferation treaty" or something. But the future of war is automated drone killing machines, they're just way cheaper to built and deploy and less risky. You can build hundreds of automated drones for the cost of one B-2 bomber, and mount a saturation offense against any defender.

People need to widen their gaze from fixation on Silicon Valley. The problem is in Washington, the problem is a $700 billion defense budget, a war on terror, and extrajudicial drone assassinations. Everyday people on HackerNews are complaining about ad tracking, navel gazing their industry, meanwhile, they silently accept their own governments tracking people and killing them with hellfire missiles. (I get that people feel helpless with respect to resisting the military industrial complex and feel they can have some say over an industry they're more closing associated with, but I'm pretty sure there's plenty of HN readers who actually favor the US military empire)

Presumably, a talented software engineer has literally hundreds of other options besides Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Oracle, and Palantir though, right?

I agree we need strict regulations on the use of AI in the military. It carries the same risks as nuclear weapons and chemical and biological weapons for disproportionate harm, but without the extreme cost.

"I'm pretty sure there's plenty of HN readers who actually favor the US military empire"

From the comments of many of the people defending Google's involvement in Project Maven, I am quite confident, unfortunately, that you are correct there as well.

Talented engineers do have a choice but Google has been the most desired place to work for a very long time.

In the last 10 years they have been the #1 place to work 6 of the last 10 years.

http://fortune.com/best-companies/2017/

http://reviews.greatplacetowork.com/2016-fortune-100-best-co...

http://fortune.com/best-companies/2015/

http://fortune.com/best-companies/2014/

So in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 it has been Google.

That does not just happen. Plus we have not had anyone else do it 2 years in a row let alone 6 straight years!

Plus a lot of engineers want to work someplace that is interested in the greater good.

So do things like what Google did in China with leaving instead of doing what was morally wrong for a buck.

Also a lot of the top engineers want to publish and share and Google allows their engineers to do this.

Google does tons of open source also which is attractive to engineers.

The younger people are much more into companies interested in the greater good then just to make a buck.

It is why you see Google on top of the list so often and a company like Microsoft way down on the list and do not think has ever been a top company?

Of course companies have ethics and morals. Companies are run by people.

Google more than most if we look at actions. The biggest was leaving China over principle and losing out on a ton of money versus Apple handing over their user data.

But there are so many more with Google. So many crazy ones.

Look at smartphones and Google continuing to give away Android for free. Even in China where there is not Google services and Google even lets Amazon use it for all their hardware.

Google doing this makes phones available to people that would not have the means otherwise. If just Apple they would be stuck.

But a huge one that is close to home is what Google has done for K12 in the US. Our school use to be all Apple but has now replaced the Apple with using Google for pretty much everything.

Our school is relatively wealthy but many are not has blessed as ours and Google offering ChromeOS for free and all the software makes it possible for these kids to have access to computer technology that without Google they would not.

But the big one for us is the analytics. Matching kids up to teachers is so,so,so important and can make a huge difference in a kids life. Previous it had been done by gut. Our school has moved to using the Google ecocystem and our school is a Google K12 showcase school. I forget what they call it. So they are working with our school to use analytics to match kid to teacher.

That just would never have happened or not for a long time without Google.

Also think about the schools that were using Microsoft before replacing with Google. We were lucky we had the money to buy Apple but some were not as lucky and the improvement will be far greater for the schools that were previously using Microsoft. Teachers have limited class time and Windows would cause them to lose a lot more class time dealing with silliness. Or more likely the laptops left in the corner has full of viruses and malware.

I can give countless other examples. Where would we be with data scientice without the Map/Reduce and GFS papers?

Why did Google give it away?

How about Borg and now we have K8s? Why did they give that away?

Or the source code to so many different systems. Or why on earth when you own the front and back end and come up with SPDY did you give it away? Then the standard group changes it and you still spend the money to make sure you are standard.

Probably one of the biggest is VP8 and VP9. The MPEG-LA was trying to exort us for license fees. Google not only gives away VP8 for free but then on top tells people they will protect them from patent infringement.

Google even gave it away to competitors.

Do you realize even though Google has tons and tons of IP they have not sued another company for infringement? I mean never! That helps all of us.

Waymo did go after Uber but that was not Google. I suspect Waymo will be handled differently as they are not giving everything away like Google.

The other case was a suit started by Moto before Google purchase that they let go.

Then we have Shellshock, Meltdown, Spectre, Heartbleed, Cloudbleed among others all found from Google.

Heck Google found the Cloudbleed bug and shared with Cloudflare for free including the mitigation even though they are freaking competitors!! Google spent money to help them. Now how on earth is that not morals? Doing the right thing? But what drives your posts?

Google shared the Meltdown mitigation with MS and Amazon so they could save money

I can not think of any tech company that has given back nearly as much as Google. So many times deciding to do what is right versus what would have made them a buck.

Can you name any company in history that has given back as much as Google? Look at the papers they have shared with things like Wavenet, and AlphaGo and BigTable and a big new one Google Beyond Corp and literally 100s of others?

Parc gave back a lot as well as Bell labs but if we look at the benefit to the industry I would say Google has given more. Part of it is the industry is also much bigger.

Long post but not what I care about. I am insanely curious by nature and I just have to know what drives the half truths over and over again you post on HN about Google?

Is it your job? Why?

It seems to be the only contribution you make to HN is to make something up or twist something over and over again.

Please share why?

You've gotten involved in way too many flamewars about Google and your comments are lowering the quality of this site. That's a moderation issue. Here you crossed into outright personal attack. We ban users that do that, so please don't do it again, and would you please stop commenting so much, and so exclusively, about Google? This sort of agenda is boring, and not what HN is for.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17216633 also.

The issue is there is a poster that goes by "ocdtrekkie" for some reason has post a number of times things that are not true and pretty much only posts things that are not true around Google in a negative light. Not sure what drives it but it is not based on facts.

Am I allowed to refute when things said are not true? I will post with facts to support?

Perfect example is him posting all over that Google removed "do not be evil" from employee code of conduct.

Here is a link to the actual agreement. Please read the last line and what employees are left with.

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

"And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"

Now this is a factual matter. Not an opinion. So him posting something that is blatantly untrue I am not allowed to refute with facts?

He does this same thing constantly.

Just looking for help how to handle someone that does this over and over again.

Thanks in advance!

Arguments like this are not as 'factual' as they feel to the people arguing, but are driven by conflicting preferences and emotions. If I like X strongly enough and you despise X strongly enough, then every time we meet we're going to tangle about X. Such arguments are repetitive, tedious to everyone else, and devolve into incivility. The impulse to do this needs to be resisted. So the answer to your question "how to handle someone that does this" is that you don't have to "handle" them, and we need you to let it go because your attempts to "handle" them are damaging the site.

Occasionally it happens that a user fees so strongly about a company that they have to comment about it every which way. For or against, this is a problem: it's repetitive and provokes worse. As I've tried to explain to you elsewhere, you've crossed the line with this Google stuff where you're not having a curiosity-driven conversation, but rather prosecuting an agenda and inundating the threads. Other users have been complaining about your comments for some time now. Lest you think we're favoring one side, I've said similar things to ocdtrekkie.

In the past, we've had to ban people who couldn't or wouldn't stop doing this. If you want to participate on HN, please remember the site's purpose: the gratification of intellectual curiosity. That's not an emotion that gets fixed on any single thing, and it flourishes with variety, not repetition.

Saying that Google removed "do not be evil" in a employee code of conduct document that we can clearly see is in the document is not a fact?

Here is the agreement.

The very last statement is

"And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

How is that not a fact?

My issue is just things that a clearly, factually, untrue like the example above. NOT things that are opinion.

I love HN and it is a great source because we do NOT have people doing what ocdtrekkie does. But I feel things that are very, very black and white like the example I gave above should be allowed to be countered. Or better yet just NOT allowed.

Can you please roll back the Google agenda in your comments? We've had this discussion before. At a certain point it starts to affect the quality of this site by making things more predictable and flamewar-prone, triggering accusations of astroturf, and all the rest of internet disease. You appear to have passed that point again recently, as more than one moderator has noticed. It's not what HN is for, and it's tedious, so please don't.

(It doesn't matter that it's about Google—the same is true for any X. X just happens to be Google in this case, as it is with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17214242. And when two of these get going on each other...hoo boy.)

this is so stupid. Meanwhile Chinese govt is going full steam head with AI. This will come back to bite Americans.

I suspect China will eventually regret creating it's own dystopian society. (Some would argue it is already there.)

And anyways, please explain the bogeyman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17210194

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