Google fires top AI ethics researcher Margaret Mitchell

Wow. How tragic for those impacted.

The linked story lends quite a fascinating vigilante-ethicist vibe to the events. If I understand correctly, the allegedly-malfeasant corporation's corporate ethicist detected a vile ethics breach in the system, and in turn decided to breach the system in order to detect the corporate malfeasance.

If true, this is a pretty stunning example of the problem of qualitative ethics. They are deep, like the fractal the ethicist mentions. This is not limited to AI. You can't checklist them. They are everywhere, and just when you think you've figured them out, there's another blind corner ahead.

And a big problem with that: Corporations, as group-oriented, yet still subjective, inward-facing/loving organisms, tend to struggle with the depth required to even parse situations like this. Parsing is itself far from deep-diving--I hope the best for all involved...