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Comment by free_rms | Hacker News Reader

Set aside the details, it's clear that the definition of "ethics" is "things which are currently fashionable in US coastal universities".

The fact that many of these technologies could be used to steer a cruise missile? Barely on the radar (heh). Nothing about poverty, religious issues, the global south.. but something vaguely resonant with US culture wars? Sound the alarm!

Any real conception of "ethics" in my mind should be studiously divorced from fashion and group affiliation.

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>Set aside the details, it's clear that the definition of "ethics" is "things which are currently fashionable in US coastal universities"

I just read around 20 of the broader impact statements from NeurIPS 2020 papers (at random) and exactly 0 covered such topics. Most covered purely technical issues or concerns. One talked about datasets not representing all world populations. Another talked about the model being used to power weapons. One talked about advertising. One talked about essentially subliminal messaging. Two mentioned adversarial attacks leading to potential life threatening injuries (industrial equipment, traffic systems, etc.).

Look, if you're going to have an objection to something then at least look into it rather than blindly forcing your own preconceived views onto it irrespective of reality.

I wasn't talking about the actual researchers, I was talking about the 'ethics' people insisting on these sections (who may also be actual researchers).

I would expect most of the papers who have to fill in some impact statement to fill it in with the most anodyne thing possible and get on with their jobs.

I'm all for thinking about ethics, and particularly the 'adversarial attacks on poorly understood NNs' you mentioned resonates with me. That doesn't mean I can't also distrust people who want to claim 'ethics' for their political views.

It's interesting, the concept of academic freedom is supposed to prevent individual researchers from having to in any way pay service, even lip service, to anything not directly related to their research. It is a fundamental principle of academic research, and your comment reminds me that even if as you say, people are just putting down some platitude about broader impact, it completely flies in the face of academic traditions where researchers are free to judge what is important and what is not in their work. This kind of requirement is an end run around academic freedom which exists exactly to combat any outside influence in research

Another way of saying it is that if a paper/technique is badly missing some interesting ethical implication, that's a great invitation for someone else to publish and set us all straight.

I have to fundamentally disagree, in that if "the concept of academic freedom is supposed to prevent individual researchers from having to in any way pay service, even lip service, to anything not directly related to their research" then we'd have even less teaching by professors in this country. Who the heck wants to teach linear algebra for the 47th time? or worse, precalculus? oh right, that's what pays the bills.

Please be accurate about academic freedom :)

Teaching is functional. Performative adherence to other people's politics is less so.

... for some definitions of functional... was it really so useful for one prof I had to read the pages from the book to us and not take questions? He did nothing else.

Sure but you're mixing apples and oranges here.

Can we think about how funny it would be if someone was doing social justice rhetoric with that level of energy?

"well, uhh, you see this is, uhh, problematic i guess, they weren't being an ally. cough. you see, there are a lot of, uh, intersectional and marginalized angles here, it's really complicated. lots of microaggressions. anyways, do the odd questions on page 38, see you wednesday."

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