Google's ethics board shut down
&gt; There had been an outcry over the appointment of Kay Coles James, who is president of conservative thinktank The Heritage Foundation. Thousands of Google employees signed a petition calling for her removal, over what they described as &quot;anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant&quot; comments.<p>And<p>&gt; At the weekend, board member Prof Alessandro Acquisti resigned, tweeting: &quot;While I&#x27;m devoted to research grappling with key ethical issues of fairness, rights and inclusion in AI, I don&#x27;t believe this is the right forum for me to engage in this important work.&quot;<p>So it sounds like Google picked someone with a &quot;dissenting&quot; opinion (the conservative) who then was pushed out for her dissenting opinion, and then another board member decided to leave, either because they too worried about being pushed out for not toeing the line, or worried about having to debate the other person.<p>Either way, it sounds like &quot;diversity of opinion&quot; was only lip service here.  Isn&#x27;t the whole point of an ethics board to have people who have different takes on the ethics of a situation?  If the whole board is comprised of like minded individuals, doesn&#x27;t that defeat the point?