Google's ethics board shut down
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
And
> At the weekend, board member Prof Alessandro Acquisti resigned, tweeting: "While I'm devoted to research grappling with key ethical issues of fairness, rights and inclusion in AI, I don't believe this is the right forum for me to engage in this important work."
So it sounds like Google picked someone with a "dissenting" opinion (the conservative) who then was pushed out for her dissenting opinion, and then another board member decided to leave, either because they too worried about being pushed out for not toeing the line, or worried about having to debate the other person.
Either way, it sounds like "diversity of opinion" was only lip service here. Isn't the whole point of an ethics board to have people who have different takes on the ethics of a situation? If the whole board is comprised of like minded individuals, doesn't that defeat the point?
Anti-immigration... well... that's policy related and I think that's perfectly acceptable. As long as it isn't bigoted and remains practical, there's nothing necessarily wrong with wanting to close borders (I think its the wrong move but yeah, we can certainly talk policy).
Kay Coles James had the following tweet, which was what set off the firestorm of criticism:
https://twitter.com/KayColesJames/status/1108365238779498497
> Today @heritage will critique gender identity @UN_CSW because powerful nations are pressing for the radical redefining of sex. If they can change the definition of women to include men, they can erase efforts to empower women economically, socially, and politically. #CSW63
Part of this problem is the restrictive nature of Twitter: you can't open a can of worms like this without people seeing the worst in it. Based on her anti-trans statements in the past, people are reading into this as bigoted against transexuals (ie: Refusing to call people by their preferred gender).
If someone is unable to keep an open mind about transgendered people, they probably shouldn't be allowed onto an ethics board.
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Its very difficult for me to find a non-bigoted interpretation of the above tweet. It seems pretty clearly cut to be anti-trans people.
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In any case, I appreciate the difficulty in setting up an ethics board. There are a diverse set of opinions in the USA, and the overriding "meta-opinion" of openness to new thoughts immediately comes into contradiction as soon as bigots arrive.
So the question is: do you allow the transsexuals to enter your ethics board, or do you allow anti-trans opinions onto the board? In my eyes, there's one set of opinion that is more valuable.
I'd ideally want a better champion of conservative values who doesn't make us look like bigots. There's a wave of socialism that is becoming popular... but this is getting more into irrelevant politics.
The Heritage Foundation is a very, very big organization. Very conservative group, and yes, there are bigots in the party. Nonetheless, I'd rather see conservatives champion the tenants of the free market, anti-regulation, personal freedoms, etc. etc. Heck, one or two people who are openly religious and aren't afraid to say "God" once in a while would be great.
Its a bit hard to discuss these days, because of the President in the room which is tilting conservative thought in one major direction... but there's more than just that branch of conservatism going on.
In any case, it shouldn't be too difficult to pick out a non-bigoted conservative champion. Well... it's become difficult, because the non-bigots have spoken out against the current party leadership and are now ostracized by the party. (IE: Jeff Flake, McCain, Kasich, to name a few). So I recognize the failings of the current party as well as the "brain drain" going on among conservatives. But I'd imagine non-bigots are still around somewhere, at least the more quiet ones have to be sitting around somewhere.
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In any case, I'd want a GOOD conservative to sit on a major board like that. First, to show the world that conservatives are more than just... the current leadership... and second, to ensure that conservative values can be kept in a modern world.
It is possible to proudly proclaim your religion without necessarily hampering discussion from others of other religions. A Christian who asks for a moment of silence or a quiet prayer doesn't necessarily exclude the Hindu or Muslim communities. (As long as Hindu / Muslims get a turn for themselves) Etc. etc. There's definitely this strain of strong secularism that liberals have (nothing "malicious", but when was the last time you saw a liberal discuss their religious views publicly?), and I think that having a few openly religious "conservative leaning" viewpoints can help with diversity.
Etc. etc. There's a lot to discuss, but its all politics and kinda tangential to the subject. But those are the sorts of things that a good conservative would bring to the table.
Should we invite influential amish personalities to our confs going forward? You know, so they can contribute their diversity of opinion to the techno-hacker community?
Actually, that'd be a great idea. IIRC, the Amish aren't against technology, they're just against letting new technology haphazardly drive social changes, so they're careful in how they adopt and use it.
For instance one group decided to adopt the telephone, but they were wary of it disrupting family and community social bonds by causing people to shift their focus to other people far away (a practice that is demonstrated writ small when you ignore everyone around you to take a call). They managed the drawback by specifying the community wouldn't have telephones in their homes, but only have one telephone in a little phone booth for everyone to use.
So focusing on just the Google ethics team; if your team can't even agree on the definition of ethical how can it reach consensus on ethics issues?
2019: Don't be ethical.
People must learn to get along.