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Comment by ahelwer | Hacker News Reader

There was widespread protest from outside the bubble, too. You'll be unsurprised to learn the entire AI ethics space is being enthusiastically colonized by Thought Leaders all too happy to hold "discussions" in service of whatever their corporate funders desire. Oh sure there'll be some token pearl-clutching, but you can't stop progress (toward ubiquitous facial recognition) right?

Anyway, if you're interested in seeing all the ridiculous shenanigans these people try to pull I recommend following @farbandish on twitter.

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I thought it was only 1 or 2 people out of 8 who were problematic; How is that "colonizing"? It also stills feels disingenuous to judge all 8 people's intent and position without them meeting a single time or making any deliberation.

> I thought it was only 1 or 2 people out of 8 who were problematic

I think ahelwer meant the AI ethics space in general, not just this panel.

As a researcher who has been working in ML and also software engineering ethics since long before "AI ethics" became a thing, I've definitely noticed a massive infusion of self-promoting "thought leaders" who have zero expertise in either of those things.

Most of those people are MBAs with little or no actual business experience and zero software knowledge (let alone ML or AI research experience). Their ethics background usually amounts to a few undergraduate philosophy courses that, ironically, failed to teach them the one thing that a philosophy course should teach: a modicum intellectual humility.

And yes, those folks tend to care mostly about their paychecks.

> There was widespread protest from outside the bubble, too

It seems implausible that anyone not in a bubble cares what happens to Google's 8-person no-actual-power ethics team. It could be composed of witches and warlocks who spend their days researching pentagrams and nobody should care. There are a lot of small, questionable teams in large companies.

It is only remotely newsworthy as evidence that Google culturally purges conservative voices. Even with that frame; it could just be a beat up. I'd define the bubble as people who were getting worked up over it; they are obviously culturally synchronized because there isn't an obvious rational link.

Actually I think you'll find quite a few people care about what the megacorps decide to do with AI and their approach to the ethics surrounding it, since it's currently a fantasy to hope for regulation by the US gov.

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