
Google employees call for removal of rightwing thinktank leader from AI council - drugme
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/01/google-kay-coles-james-removal-employees-letter
======
kevwil
... because God forbid there be a variety of perspectives on an AI council.

People laughed at Musk for his AI doom rants, me included, but if this is how
it's going so far ... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
threatofrain
What sort of perspectives are we talking about? These are from the news
article:

[https://twitter.com/KayColesJames/status/1108768455141007360](https://twitter.com/KayColesJames/status/1108768455141007360)

[https://twitter.com/KayColesJames/status/1108365238779498497](https://twitter.com/KayColesJames/status/1108365238779498497)

~~~
yostrovs
"a variety of perspectives" was mentioned. This variety, I'm assuming,
includes how the majority of people view the one topic you threw out.

I'm getting the impression that you believe that having that opinion on that
topic should disqualify someone from any important role. Am I correct?

~~~
dragontamer
Generally speaking, bigoted speech should be disqualifying. Now, people may
not recognize transphobia as bigoted, but I personally consider it bigoted.

The Klans members have been removed from public office for the most part, and
forced to live in the shadows. I think the social movement to become more
inclusive requires us to expand beyond just shunning racism, but also expand
towards shunning homophobia, transphobia, and islamaphobia.

I think "ThreadOfRain" has a good point above: if one speaker is publicly and
openly transphobic, perhaps that would be reason enough to disqualify them
(akin to how we disqualify other public speakers for being racists). I don't
know much about this particular "Kay Coles James" person however, so I dunno
whether or not those tweets have a greater context. But it doesn't look good
IMO.

\------------

I'd like to think there are plenty of conservative speakers who aren't
Transphobic, who would likely be a better rolemodel to fit on the AI Council.

~~~
RickJWagner
Is it transphobic to disagree with born-males competing in girl's sports?

Because I consider that an unfair advantage.

Where is the line?

~~~
belorn
That is a tangential debate, but it is a false premise. Sport should quantify
what unfair advantage is.

Two studies:
[https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/athleticperformance](https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/athleticperformance)
and
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3993978/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3993978/)

 _The heritability of a trait is generally considered an estimation of the
importance of genetic factors to that trait. For example, the heritability of
athletic status (regardless of sport) is estimated to be 66% (4). Height,
which is critical for success in some sports, is highly heritable, with about
80% of the variation due to genetic factors (5). Body type (having mesomorphic
or ectomorphic somatotype) is also highly heritable (6). These somatotypes are
classically associated with power or endurance athlete status, respectively
(7)._

 _Costa et al. (8) recently reviewed the existing family and twin studies
related to specific endurance and muscular strength phenotypes. Aerobic
endurance, as reflected by VO2max has a heritability of about 50% (9).
Heritability estimates for muscular strength, and power range from 30 to 83%,
depending on the specific muscle and type of contraction (8)._

As a personal opinion, the reason why sport is split on gender is because of
the spectators. You get more women to watch sport if you have a women sport
team. You do not get more short people to watch sport by splitting the teams
based on height. Thus we split on gender. It has nothing to do with fairness
and everything to do with money.

------
creaghpatr
>The employees also said it was wrong to cite James’ appointment as an example
of “diversity of thought”, writing: “This is a weaponization of the language
of diversity.

It's funny because she's a black woman.

------
Mizza
The practical of evil of working for a surveillance company like Google
outweighs the hypothetical evil of working for a think tank like the Heritage
foundation.

~~~
threeseed
It says in your profile you founded Gun.io which has Cisco as a client ?

You don't think that's a little hypocritical given that they have likely been
involved in far more surveillance than Google ever has.

~~~
Mizza
I don't work for Cisco. Even then, Google's business model is surveillance,
Cisco's is selling routers.

I don't wake up every day to spy on people. If you do, you're a bad person in
my book.

~~~
drivingmenuts
But you do work for a company far more entrenched in surveillance than Google.
Cisco provides one of the base layers for a surveillance state, not just
combing thru the data.

Which is not to say Google has clean hands, just that you should consider
Ccisco’s involvement as well.

~~~
jonfw
Is there evidence that Cisco is intentionally creating backdoors?

A backdoor by mistake is incompetent, not evil.

Building censored search products and collecting the amount of consumer data
that google does without clearly informing consumers is evil, and it's clearly
intentional.

Cisco may not be perfect, but I've yet to see evidence that it's blatantly
evil

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theorique
Left-wing newspaper reports on actions of left-wing employees of major tech
company based in left-wing geographic area.

I'm quite sure this article is going to be unbiased...

~~~
hello_friendos
newspaper reports on actions employees of major tech company

-FTFY

~~~
jonfw
All you've done here is inaccurately paraphrase him, you've failed to make a
point.

~~~
happytoexplain
The implication of your GP that your parent is implicitly criticizing is that
merely having a political affiliation disqualifies one's opinions by default
on matters of opposing political matters. I'd agree that was the implication
made by the GP, and I'd agree that it's a destructive oversimplification.

