Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO
This issue reminds me a lot of what we do in security and privacy, which are ostensibly engineering disciplines, but are really technology governance functions. Ethical AI is also a governance function, and like hackers in security, there is an invisible yet stark limit to the value activists can provide in actual governance roles. Litigating demands is just not how governance gets done.<p>The irony of Google hiring so many smart people is that they get a cluster people who were institutionalized by academia, and now they have a CEO who has to act like an institutional  dean.<p>Hackers hold your products to their standards, and ideally that adds value to your customers. Ethical AI people seem to do the same. The problem with both is that if you fail their purity tests, they will also sabotage your company because they&#x27;re indexed on a greater good.<p>That the company is dealing with factions of what are essentially student activists issuing demands seems like an inflection point where any further growth is going to be a function of market domination and not their ability to align to make things.