<story><title>AI at Google: our principles</title><url>https://blog.google/topics/ai/ai-principles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ksk</author><text>Historically has anyone succeeded in holding such giant firms accountable to their own stated principles? At the moment, I like those principles more than I like Google.</text></item><item><author>themacguffinman</author><text>I doubt that Google spelling out their moral stance is intended to convince you right away that they&amp;#x27;re all good now. It&amp;#x27;s a public standard that they&amp;#x27;re setting for themselves. If you think their actions don&amp;#x27;t match their words, you now have concrete terms and principles to critique and compare with. It&amp;#x27;s a benchmark to which employees and the public can hold them accountable.</text></item><item><author>EpicEng</author><text>So, I&amp;#x27;m all for giving someone the benefit of the doubt if they have a change of heart upon reconsidering an issue, but this coming after the fact rings a bit hollow to me. I think the only principle at play here is that it became a PR issue. That&amp;#x27;s fine, but let&amp;#x27;s be honest about it.&lt;p&gt;Early emails between Google execs framed this project only in terms of revenue and potential PR backlash. As far as we&amp;#x27;re aware, there was no discussion about the morality of the matter (I&amp;#x27;m not taking any moral stance here just to be clear.)  Once this became an internal and external PR issue, Google held a series of all hands meetings and claimed that this was a &amp;quot;small project&amp;quot; and that the AI would not be used to kill people. While technically true,  those same internal emails show that Google expected this to become a much larger project over time, eventually bringing in about $250M &amp;#x2F; year[1]. So even then they were being a bit disingenuous by focusing only on the current scope of the deal.&lt;p&gt;And here we are now with a release from the CEO talking about morality and &amp;quot;principles&amp;quot; well after the fact. I doubt many people do anyway, but I&amp;#x27;m not buying the &amp;quot;these are our morals&amp;quot; bit.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bizjournals.com&amp;#x2F;sanjose&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;report-google-thought-military-drone-project-would.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bizjournals.com&amp;#x2F;sanjose&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;report-g...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jofer</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure externally being held accountable is as important as it would seem.&lt;p&gt;Publicly stated principles such as these give a clear framework for employees to raise ethical concerns in a way that management is likely to listen to.&lt;p&gt;For example, one of my previous employers had ten &amp;quot;tenets of operation&amp;quot; that began with &amp;quot;Always&amp;quot;.  While starting each one with &amp;quot;never&amp;quot; would have been more accurate in practice, they were still useful.  If you wanted to get management to listen to you about a potential safety or operational issue, framing the conversation in terms of &amp;quot;This violates tenet #X&amp;quot; was _extremely_ effective.  It gave them a common language to use with their management about why an issue was important.  Otherwise, potentially lethal safety hazards were continually blown off and the employees who brought them up were usually reprimanded.&lt;p&gt;Putting some airy-sounding principles in place and making them very public is effective because they&amp;#x27;re an excellent internal communication tool, not because of external accountability.</text></comment>
<story><title>AI at Google: our principles</title><url>https://blog.google/topics/ai/ai-principles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ksk</author><text>Historically has anyone succeeded in holding such giant firms accountable to their own stated principles? At the moment, I like those principles more than I like Google.</text></item><item><author>themacguffinman</author><text>I doubt that Google spelling out their moral stance is intended to convince you right away that they&amp;#x27;re all good now. It&amp;#x27;s a public standard that they&amp;#x27;re setting for themselves. If you think their actions don&amp;#x27;t match their words, you now have concrete terms and principles to critique and compare with. It&amp;#x27;s a benchmark to which employees and the public can hold them accountable.</text></item><item><author>EpicEng</author><text>So, I&amp;#x27;m all for giving someone the benefit of the doubt if they have a change of heart upon reconsidering an issue, but this coming after the fact rings a bit hollow to me. I think the only principle at play here is that it became a PR issue. That&amp;#x27;s fine, but let&amp;#x27;s be honest about it.&lt;p&gt;Early emails between Google execs framed this project only in terms of revenue and potential PR backlash. As far as we&amp;#x27;re aware, there was no discussion about the morality of the matter (I&amp;#x27;m not taking any moral stance here just to be clear.)  Once this became an internal and external PR issue, Google held a series of all hands meetings and claimed that this was a &amp;quot;small project&amp;quot; and that the AI would not be used to kill people. While technically true,  those same internal emails show that Google expected this to become a much larger project over time, eventually bringing in about $250M &amp;#x2F; year[1]. So even then they were being a bit disingenuous by focusing only on the current scope of the deal.&lt;p&gt;And here we are now with a release from the CEO talking about morality and &amp;quot;principles&amp;quot; well after the fact. I doubt many people do anyway, but I&amp;#x27;m not buying the &amp;quot;these are our morals&amp;quot; bit.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bizjournals.com&amp;#x2F;sanjose&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;report-google-thought-military-drone-project-would.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bizjournals.com&amp;#x2F;sanjose&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;report-g...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>testvox</author><text>One example I can think of is private colleges. Many in the US have made public statements dedicating themselves to uphold principles like freedom of speech. Organizations like FIRE do a pretty good job holding them accountable to those principles and there are many instances in which they have documentated policy or enforcement changes made due to their activism.</text></comment>