• conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    13 hours ago

    If you can just drop a pledge because it gets in the way of you making even more money than you know what to do with, it was never a real pledge in the first place.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      Like my organization that pledged to be 100% renewable energy based by 2025 and they promised that right up until early 2024, where it suddenly disappeared from the internal website, and now no one talks about it.

      But in fairness they made absolutely zero progress towards this goal in the previous 4 years, so it was pretty obvious they never really meant it anyway.

  • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    When they removed their “don’t be evil” motto, I thought it was hilariously bad optics but probably came from some misguided thinking that if they stopped talking about the potential for evil, people would stop wondering whether they had bad motives and needed the motto to keep straight.

    It became clearer and clearer that they removed the motto because they felt it was holding them back from greater profits and was skewing employee behaviours in ways they didn’t want and bringing up objections to policy ideas that they wanted to avoid. It was never about the optics, it was about the profits.

    Now, when Google removes a pledge not to make portable killer AIs and skynet, you have to accept that it’s because they see making portable killer AIs and skynet as hugely profitable for them, and they don’t want any good intentions or moral behaviour getting in the way of that profit.

    • Kite@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      The canary died back when they removed “don’t be evil”. I think the canary was just resurrected as a Horizon Zero Dawn mech canary.

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Um, yes?

        Following Google’s corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took “Do the right thing” as its motto, also forming the opening of its corporate code of conduct. The original motto was retained in Google’s code of conduct, now a subsidiary of Alphabet. Between April 21st and May 4th of 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct’s preface and retained in its last sentence.

        Between 21 April and 4 May 2018, Google removed the motto from the preface, leaving a mention in the final line: “And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!”

        They kept it within their internal code of conduct, but it’s been quite a while since that was their public motto.

        • Zorque@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          So… they didn’t remove it, they moved it.

          But that’s really neither here nor there, as it’s just words. I’ve never known a company to care much about words over profit.

  • kryptonidas@lemmings.world
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    1 day ago

    The Google Graveyard will be littered with the bodies of people now. Fuck them, move to something better for the world.

  • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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    1 day ago

    This clearly means the AI will be used for fire solutions and guidance, right?

    Not threat detection and target identification, right?