The idea that OpenAI people whose focus is building an AGI that can replace humans in every viable human activity will create a more ethical outcome than Microsoft whose focus is using AI to empower workers to do more sounds extremely unlikely.
People have gotten into their heads that researchers are good and corporations are bad in every case which is simply not true. OpenAI's mission is worse for humanity than Microsoft's.
Individual companies of course can and do do all kinds of things that may not be most profitable, but in the long run it's survival of the most profitable. Those get the most capital and thus have the most power of towards which goals resources are allocated.
Also companies, especially public companies, are typically mandated by law to prioritize profit.
There is no such law, ChatBLT told me so.
But seriously, there isn’t because it so vague. Short term vs long term profits alone produces so much wiggle room alone that if such a law existed it would be meaningless.
There is no such law, ChatBLT told me so.
But seriously, there isn’t because it so vague. Short term vs long term profits alone produces so much wiggle room that even if such a law existed it would be meaningless.
The term of the profit is of course a difficult matter of interpretation, but the charter is still profit, instead of e.g. ethics or benefits for mankind, on some time scale.
At least in Finnish law it's very plainly clear: "The purpose of a [limited liability] company is to make profit for shareholders, unless otherwise indicated in the bylaws."
("Yhtiön toiminnan tarkoituksena on tuottaa voittoa osakkeenomistajille, jollei yhtiöjärjestyksessä määrätä toisin." Osakeyhtiölaki, luku 1 pykälä 5)
Edit: For contrast, the purpose of universities (and thus, at least in theory, university researchers) is by law to "promote free research and scientific and cultural enlightenment, give highest education based on research and raise [their] students to serve the fatherland and mankind". [pardon for some awkward to translate phrases]
Have you heard of e.g. East India companies? Or United Fruit?
Most of stock is not owned by individual persons (not that there aren't individuals that don't give a shit about enslaving people), but other companies and institutions that by charter prioritize profit. E.g. Microsoft's institutional ownership is around 70%.
The presence of unethical people does not imply that all people are unethical, only that people are different. And that's my point. Reducing a company to "they will always maximize shareholder value" is incorrect - for many, many companies that is simply not true.
My point is that in the big picture ethics don't even matter, companies become something that transcend the individuals. Almost like algorithms that just happen to be implemented by humans (and exceedingly machines). There are no "they".
E.g. Henry Ford tried to make an ethical decision for the company to cut some dividends to benefit workers and make the products cheaper. It was ruled illegal. His mistake actually was to say that the benefits would about more than profit; arguing the investment on shareholder profit grounds could well have passed.
Probably safe to say Henry Ford had considerable power in Ford Motor Co compared most executives today?
> Probably safe to say Henry Ford had considerable power in Ford Motor Co compared most executives today?
That is not actually true, necessarily. Your power is typically very term dependent. A CEO who is also president of the board, and a majority shareholder, has far more power than a CEO who just stepped in temporarily and has only the powers provided by the by-laws.
Regardless, the solution to "I want to do something ethical that is not strictly in the company's best interest" is to make the case that it is the company's best interest. For example, "By investing in our employees we are actually prioritizing shareholder value". If you position it as "this is a move that hurts shareholders", of course that's illegal - companies have an obligation to every shareholder.
That also means that if you give your employees stock, they now have investor rights too. You can structure your company this way from the start, it's trivial and actually the norm in tech - stock is handed out to many employees.
I agree that OpenAI’s mission is probabky bad for humanity. But Microsoft is not a company that would hesitate at replacing a billion people permanently with AI.
Benedict Evans is fond of saying that ads is one of the biggest revenue makers for tech but is completely misunderstood by anyone who doesn’t work on it.
An Uber ride typically costs tens of dollars. There is no ad model where you can justify paying that sort of money for random people at scale. All of the examples in the article are forms of specific niches with high ROI (e.g. targeting a user known to buy IAPs to install Candy Crush, email addresses of corporate employees to sell them expensive SaaS products, etc). These are all outliers.
So it takes a Facebook user 6 weeks of viewing ads to generate the sad revenue equivalent to one Uber ride. Cool mock ups but this is an idea that makes less business sense than having SBF run a crypto exchange with no oversight.
> There is no ad model where you can justify paying that sort of money for random people at scale.
The ad industry wouldn't be interested in this for random impressions, but I'd be interested¹ to see how much different it would make for the average person² with full stalky personal history based ad matching enabled. They know who you are from your app profile and for the free rides the app could demand access to contacts/messages/other³.
Of course this would have great potential to cause embarrassment for some people in a taxi-sharing situation. I can see the reddit-thread-copied-by-buzzfeed-copied-by-everyone-else listicles of stories now, you'll not believe number 12!
--
[1] and not at all surprised to find someone has worked it out in detail and submitted a business plan if the numbers don't look atrocious
[2] the tech-savvy might be able to block the stalkiness, but the average person either can't or doesn't want to make the effort
[3] if not for regular rides, I can see a service offering one free ride in exchange for this access – Amazon offered me a £5 voucher in exchange for just the date of birth of my non-existent baby a while back (I'd been looking for something for a friend who is far less anti-child than I!)
No one who worked at Microsoft under Ballmer & Satya believes this. I’m curious as to why people believe that Ballmer who missed every major tech trend, threw good money after chasing competitors and had zero idea how to build build good products “laid the foundation” versus acknowledging Satya’s significant success?
I interned at Microsoft when he was CEO and he gave us a lunch q&a.
The man is the most charismatic person I've ever seen speak in person. Given just how badly he ran Microsoft, I really think his ability to convince people of stuff is some kind of superpower.
i never said satya wasn’t an incredible leader. i’ve heard as much from friends who work at microsoft.
i just don’t think it’s fair to look at the stock price of microsoft during ballers tenure at microsoft without applying the lens of the broader market.
What's actually barbaric is forcing people to move away from their friends and family in their hometowns to come live in San Francisco where there's literally faeces in the streets and a shack costs $1M let alone a livable home when can do the work just fine from their homes. The medium to large 6-figure salaries are a trade off and it's actually fairer to employees to allow them to make the choice themselves.
A shack in SF is a million bucks precisely because Facebook won't pay a SF salary unless you are in SF. If they paid a SF salary no matter where you lived, then a shack in SF would not be worth one million dollars any more.
So you're saying that not only would it be better for the workers, but San Francisco would become more affordable to poorer people who don't have tech jobs and who were perhaps born there? Sounds like a win-win to me.
Using the word “evil” to describe these companies when today there are people literally dying from COVID19 because of the policies of their employers & governments seems like a lack of perspective to me.
The framing of your question has no good answer like the classic “are you still beating your wife?” where either a yes or no is still a bad look.
> The framing of your question has no good answer like the classic “are you still beating your wife?”
I don't agree your analogy holds.
1. That famous question was rhetorical, this one isn't;
2. That was a riposte to a grand claim that questions can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" and no explanation whatsoever, the "framing" of this one — i.e., the expanded text after the headline — clearly asks for explained responses and not a simple "yes" or "no".
I don't think its a lack of perspective. Any moves they make that makes us lose some of the freedom on the internet (and in real life now) will not be temporary. It will outlive the COVID19 crisis.
Really weird to see this posted on a site that uses Google Analytics. I performed a quick search and couldn't find a similar post from Mozilla complaining that people can't opt-out from Google Analytics. I guess the > $500M/year Mozilla gets from Google buys a bunch of selective outrage.
Microsoft isn't selling your PC usage data to advertisers. If you doubt me, go ahead and show me how you can buy this data. I'll gladly give you my next month's salary if you can.
These kinds of deals are enterprise-level, in meeting rooms, with sales people. They don't happen on the public web. So your challenge isn't plausible and you take no risk here
In other words the stuff is compiled together and offered to specific businesses with specific needs, if and when they come up with it. It won't be publicly available at first. I will be customized to each industry. Once they figure out how to scale it, everyone will have access to streamlined telemetry.
it does not matter if they sell it or not I don't want it collected. It could later be subpoenaed or stolen. They should just not collect it in the first place
Microsoft comes with third party games installed by default. I am certain that those are paid for, I am certain if you open that software it phones home to let them know you did, and I'm certain that information gets sent to the game developer.
There is zero talent involved in investing such that you beat inflation. Inflation rate hovers between 1% - 3% per year. Stock market returns hover between 5% - 10% per year for fairly conservative choices like an S&P 500 index fund.
There is nothing luckier than being born rich. Treating it as some sort of skill to remain rich is part of the dysfunction in US society where wealth is equated with virtue & character.
Right - that is moving the goal posts though: This was talking about being in the top x% of the rich. If you don't keep working at it, you will drop off that list pretty quick. It is pretty much a slippery slope when you don't know how to manage money. And there is probably a very very miniscule portion of the top 1% of rich who live on index funds. When you're that rich - these don't work the way it works for us.
I did acknowledge the luck part in being rich. I do acknowledge it is far better than being poor. But if you want to remain rich and ensure your generations remain rich, that's a ton of work.
PS - seriously rich might mean different things for us though :)
I prefer to being born smart over being born rich.
If you are rich, but not smart -- it is hard to avoid temptation to invest into risky projects. It is hard to identify people who just want to drain away your money.
I'm always amused when people post racist comments and then claim "I'm not racist". Just own your racism.
In my article, I specifically talk about Atlanta which is a "black city" as you term it. Atlanta is home to Georgia Tech which is one of the best engineering schools in the country. So it is strange to imply you wouldn't be able to find CS graduates there.
Secondly, companies have no problem opening engineering offices in China or India to chase after demographics so I find it strange that opening an engineering office in Atlanta is such an absurd idea that one must trot out the must played out racist tropes about black people.
Georgia Tech only enrolls ~7.5% black students so it wouldn't help their quotas. Also companies aren't opening offices in Asia to chase after a demographic, they do it to cut costs.
People have gotten into their heads that researchers are good and corporations are bad in every case which is simply not true. OpenAI's mission is worse for humanity than Microsoft's.