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> public forums like memegen

You mean internal-public, I assume. Memegen isn't public AFAIK.

> ... because of their privately-held political views

It's hard to get called out for privately-held political views. Things you do in public, though, have consequences.

> Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs

Is that a constraint we should extend to owners of companies also? Or is flexing muscle to advance personal ideological beliefs something only reserved for Fortune 500 owners? Google was outspokenly gay-friendly before that became a mainstream opinion in the US, to give a concrete example.

Activists inside Google have no business riling up hate mob against follow employees, even when the targets of the mob have expressed non-activist-approved opinions in public. A company should not tolerate one group of employees imposing "consequences" on fellow employees for legal things that occur outside work.

Google's treatment of Kay Coles James for example disgraced the company.

Agree to disagree. KCJ was a bad pull for the AI Advisory Board and shouldn't have been offered a position in the first place. Google strives to be an LGBTQ-friendly workplace and consulting with the Heritage Foundation on more or less any topic is somewhat antithetical to that goal.

https://www.glaad.org/blog/heritage-foundation-intensely-ant...

This is exactly the mentality that I find exhausting: it's this with us or against us attitude, this idea that the company shouldn't engage at all with people who have views contrary to those of the activists, this ridiculous demand for purity --- it creates a claustrophobic and hostile ideology-suffused atmosphere. It's not healthy.

Google is one of the most LGBT-friendly companies on Earth. It's not going to lose this spirit because it has someone from a milquetoast place like Heritage on some non-binding AI advisory board. The Kay Cole's James outrage mob was an ideological flex, not a genuine concern for the wellbeing of LGBT employees in the company.

The Kay Cole's James affair is a perfect example of the activist dynamic at Google: the activists claim to be protesting vulnerable people, but what they're actually doing is trying to sideline, delegitimize, and silence their political opponents.

What perspective regarding the future of AI does the Heritage Foundation bring that another organization could not bring? they're not exactly experts in artificial intelligence. Or cybernetics. Or ethics.

> ideological flex

I'm not sure why you say that. the Googlers I corresponded with at the time had some serious questions about how this seemed to operate in contradiction to the company's goals. and if I recall correctly, the company was undergoing management shake up at the time, so I don't think it was an unfounded concern.

The entire advisory board was an activist flex on the part of Google, not a genuine interest in AI ethics (if it were, Kay Cole James would have no place on it, she has no expertise). So I'm not sure what your point is.

> It's hard to get called out for privately-held political views. Things you do in public, though, have consequences.

No, this is just wrong! If I'm making political statements in the public square (e.g. Twitter) then people should respect that as long as it's not something outlandish.

The problem is US politics is just too visceral.

In the eyes of these mobs, being a Trump supporter is akin to supporting the Nazis, and they rile everyone up to harass somebody who probably just wants lower taxes or border control.

I feel for them. It's unfortunate that in the US, the party of lower taxes is now also the party that's trying to overturn the popular vote in a national election. It'd be nice if they had a home for their political philosophy that hadn't become grossly anti-American along the way.

I strongly disagree with this view. Companies should do what is right and ethical (beyond just what is legal). And who else than the managers and employees working for the company can determine this? It requires exactly those employees pushing for what is right to move the overall company into the right direction. It was even their job as ethics in AI researchers.

Who decides what is "right" and "ethical"? Should the company ban, say, oil and gas companies from GCP because a few people get angry on industryinfo? Who put those angry people in charge?

Of course employees should be able to voice concerns about projects and policies and suggest an alternate strategy. But if leadership rejects that alternative strategy, that needs to be the end of it. If leadership disagrees with you, you can't just start leaking stuff to the press, doxxing people, and organizing protest events. A company is not Twitter and any healthy company should fire employees who are confused about the difference.

Currently, companies decide what is "right" and "ethical" using a standard - shareholder return - that has been proven time and time again to have unethical consequences.

Not infrequently the consequences are literally disastrous and/or fatal. (See also Boeing, Lehman, Enron. HP at its worst, and many many more.)

What exactly gives corporations the moral authority to act like this?

Is it simply that large accumulations of money somehow render other moral concerns irrelevant, as if by magic?

> Should the company ban, say, oil and gas companies from GCP because a few people get angry on industryinfo

I mean, maybe. They'd ban them if the few people were the owners and the SVPs.

If they company did, they'd be within their rights to. The only problem would be all the money they'd leave on the table. Usually (1), that's been the backstop against corporations operating with their private ethics on their sleeve; corps that make a habit of leaving money on the table tend to get left behind by the market.

If Google started banning GCP use for ethical reasons, some other company would step up to fill the gap; no doubt.

(1) Usually. Chik-fil-A supports conversion therapy for LGBTQ people and Hobby Lobby's owners have used their assets for "art acquisition" that was illegal.

> Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs.

Are you saying that this extreme "personal ideological belief" you just stated is applicable to every single company on the planet?