[HN Gopher] ACM, Ethics, and Corporate Behavior
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ACM, Ethics, and Corporate Behavior
Author : pabs3
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-02-25 06:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cacm.acm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cacm.acm.org)
| Glyptodon wrote:
| When the ACM code of ethics was being discussed for adoption it
| was ensured to be toothless so as not to alienate large
| corporations and China, which would have been bad for the
| organization in various respects.
| mathteddybear wrote:
| The term "surveillance capitalism" was made by one prof
| (seriously, the book starts with one-pager "The Definition", Sur-
| veil-lance Cap-i-tal-ism, n. (...)), however it has its own
| Wikipedia page. On that Wikipedia page, "ethi" is not found.
|
| The way I see it, it won't be common to blanket struck down a
| Turing award winner for working at Google.
| thewakalix wrote:
| How is it in any way significant that the sequence of letters
| "ethi" is not present in a Wikipedia article?
| mathteddybear wrote:
| In the linked opinion piece, the author calls the
| surveillance capitalism unethical; the author of Surveillance
| Capitalism wrote entire book which is more nuanced. Likewise,
| the field of algorithmic fairness is more detailed than the
| political scandals that surfaced.
| norswap wrote:
| He can talk a big game about ethics, for someone representing an
| organization that is essentially stealing the labour of publicly
| funded researcher and putting it behind a paywall.
|
| I'm an hypocrite like all the others though, I was a member for a
| few years (to reduce my conference fees).
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| Blaming technology for societal failures... here we go again.
| Development of more powerful technology will always require
| development of responsible regulations. It's not a good argument
| toward becoming a nation of Luddites, and more importantly,
| abdicating our regulatory responsibility to the companies who
| stand to profit from it.
|
| > AI technology is the fundamental technology that underlies
| "Surveillance Capitalism,"
|
| How about this -- _capitalism_ is the fundamental system of
| economics that underlies "Surveillance Capitalism".
|
| _To the deleted comment:_
|
| My point in turning that statement around is that if you see
| surveillance capitalism as being bad (the author says this
| plainly), then perhaps the discussion is really about economic
| policies and not AI.
|
| The author bends over backwards to paint nebulous "AI" and
| "machine learning" in a bad light over problems that existed long
| before their arrival. What these more powerful tools have done is
| to ramp up the problems and put them front and center. But in the
| end, the economic profitability of surveillance capitalism has
| never been challenged.
|
| Nothing in this article really has to do with AI at all, and it's
| confusing why the author spends so much time trying to draw up so
| much negative sentiment, in order to deflect from the real
| underlying issues.
| [deleted]
| Beldin wrote:
| > _Nothing in this article really has to do with AI at all, and
| it 's confusing why the author spends so much time trying to
| draw up so much negative sentiment, in order to deflect from
| the real underlying issues._
|
| I'm not sure if you're referring to Moshe Vardi or the deleted
| comment with "the author".
|
| The former recognises that he is in a position of influence in
| "the" CS society and is instructing them to account for ethics
| better, even if that leads to uncomfortable discussions (and
| repercussionsin the form of less sponsor money).
|
| The latter: no clue. That comment was deleted, let's stop the
| discussion there. (If for no other reason as to not exclude
| those who missed the comment. )
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| > The former recognises that he is in a position of influence
| in "the" CS society and is instructing them to account for
| ethics better, even if that leads to uncomfortable
| discussions (and repercussionsin the form of less sponsor
| money).
|
| We probably haven't worked at the same places, but in my
| experience, unethical decisions aren't made at the bottom. I
| don't understand the point of the author making a populism-
| styled appeal here. What are we going to do, ramp up cancel
| culture? Furrow our brows harder and wag our fingers more
| sternly? These things aren't working, and if anything, have
| allowed the actual problem to persist: "surveillance
| capitalism" is legal and profitable. If the best company
| doesn't take up the profit, the worst certainly will.
|
| If a business stands to profit by doing unethical things, how
| can we expect them to act differently if they won't face any
| legal accountability? Most people in the US believes that
| it's the primary responsibility of companies to make money
| for their shareholders by any legal means. If we collectively
| deem surveillance capitalism to be predatory, then the only
| answer is to either make it unprofitable, or illegal.
|
| I feel like I should say something about AI, but it adds
| nothing to this discussion, other than it has made
| surveillance capitalism more aggressive. We used to have
| little guns, and now we have bigger ones. This will always be
| the case as long as technology is pursued.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > unethical decisions aren't made at the bottom
|
| But they sure are implemented at the bottom.
|
| This article was published in CACM, whose target audience
| is CS academics and industry professionals. They are the
| people actually building and researching these
| technologies. I have literally heard a researcher in deep
| fakes say without irony that it's not their role to think
| about ethics in their research, because it will get done
| anyway, there the ethics questions should be left to others
| who are better trained to think about such things. That's
| sure a position to take, but I would say this article
| serves to speak in opposition to that kind of view. Moshe
| Vardi is highly respected and very influential, and he's
| basically calling out researchers and developers in engaged
| in this work as unethical: Surveillance
| capitalism is perfectly legal, and enormously profitable,
| but it is unethical, many people believe, including me
|
| Those are heavy words coming from someone of his import.
| Personally due to the respect I have for him, if Moshe
| Vardi said that about my work, I'd maybe think twice about
| how I was spending my time. Because Lord knows the people
| doing the work of implementing and maintaining surveillance
| capitalism have very lucrative options. It's not like there
| isn't interesting work to do outside of this area. It's not
| like there isn't _important_ work that needs to be done but
| can 't because "surveillance capitalism" is so profitable
| that it acts as a black hole of young talent.
|
| And so what this piece is really about is saying that if
| these people are going to be engaged in arguably unethical
| work, then maybe we shouldn't be elevating then with
| recognition within this particular (very influential)
| industry group. Instead we should call out what they're
| doing and introspect a little bit about our relationship
| with them (I say we and our as a member of the ACM, and I
| agree with what Moshe Vardi wrote here).
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Yet, with the exception of FAccT, I have seen practically no
| serious discussion in the ACM community of its relationship with
| surveillance-capitalism corporations. For example, the ACM Turing
| Award, ACM's highest award, is now accompanied by a prize of US$1
| million, supported by Google.
|
| Indeed. Let's take a look at who sponsors the some of the top ACM
| conferences:
|
| The Web - Facebook[0]
|
| CHI - Facebook[1]
|
| KDD - Facebook[2]
|
| CCS - Facebook[3]
|
| You get the drift...
|
| This one is especially amusing: The AIAA/ACM Conference on
| Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society - Brought to you by
| Facebook[4] and Google Deepmind[5].
|
| Not to mention how much money Facebook gives to academic research
| labs. Funding PhD students and academic research is laudable, but
| the things they've funded over the last decade have gone directly
| to improve their surveillance efforts. It's been said that the
| greatest tragedy in computing during the 2010s was the number of
| brilliant minds devoted to ranking ads on web pages.
|
| And it's not just that it's a few of them, and that there are
| enough resources to multitask and research all the things. No, it
| _is_ a zero sum game. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon etc.
| suck up all of the available oxygen in any room. Their concerns
| are what everyone focuses on, at the exclusion of other things
| that could serve us better.
|
| [0] https://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2021/index.html
|
| [1] https://kdd.org/kdd2021/sponsors
|
| [2] https://chi2021.acm.org/for-sponsors-exhibitors-and-
| recruite...
|
| [3] https://www2022.thewebconf.org
|
| [4] https://www.aies-conference.com/2021/
|
| [5] https://www.aies-conference.com/2022/
| kragen wrote:
| As long as the ACM continues using copyright to restrict access
| to the intellectual heritage of humanity, they are in no position
| to comment on the ethics of corporate behavior.
|
| In this article, Vardi says, "I have seen practically no serious
| discussion in the ACM community of its relationship with
| surveillance-capitalism corporations;" well, that's because
| people who take ethics seriously avoid participating in the ACM
| community.
| kurthr wrote:
| You know what... I think both can be true, and it's good for
| you to point out the hypocrisy. ACM has been around a long time
| and they've gotten some stuff right and missed a lot of stuff,
| but when they come out to talk about ethics, it's time to hold
| their feet to the fire.
| adrian_b wrote:
| While in general I agree with you about those who abuse
| copyright, of all organizations that I am aware of, ACM is the
| one who abuses copyright the least.
|
| Unlike many other organizations, which might ask you for $30
| for each research paper of a few pages whom you happen to want
| to read, for about $200 (membership fee + library fee) you can
| have access for a year to the entire ACM digital library, where
| there are at least a few hundreds of thousands of research
| papers, or maybe millions, including the vast majority of all
| which were important in the first few decades of computing
| technology, and which, in my opinion, are still more relevant
| today than many people who read only the latest papers believe
| (because many of the latest papers frequently rediscover
| already known old techniques).
| danaris wrote:
| This kind of attitude is detrimental to the overall progress
| and improvement of ethics in general. Insisting on absolute
| ideological purity before a person or group is "allowed" (or
| "in a position to") make _any_ comment on ethics is both
| hopelessly unrealistic and deeply counterproductive.
|
| Yes, there are ethical stances, and records of conduct, that
| are _so_ egregious they call into question anything else
| someone says--but to say that the ACM is "in no position" to
| call for improved ethics in AI and a move away from
| surveillance capitalism because of a _completely unrelated_
| objection you have to their conduct regarding copyright does no
| one any service.
|
| Call out their bad behavior, yes--but when they say something
| that's genuinely positive, acknowledge that. _Reward behavior
| you would like to see repeated_ , even if it isn't _absolutely
| everything_ you want or responding to your personal pet peeve.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I wonder how the ACM's composition affects their stance on this.
| If most of ACM's influential participants come from academe, it
| costs little to label advertising as unethical. Now if we were to
| discuss the exploitation of naive graduate students, then there
| might be a little more back and forth.
|
| The whole notion of calling a given thing unethical in modern
| discourse is interesting to me, because there is not just one
| ethics. A person could reasonably reflect on personalized
| advertising and ask: "what concrete harms have been done?" I
| think it would be hard to point out much that is unambiguous.
| People like to bring up Cambridge Analytica or social media
| misinformation, but neither case is necessarily advertising
| related. You could equally well argue those cases arise from
| Facebook's and Twitter's reluctance to embrace information
| paternalism.
|
| I think it's fair for someone to comment on social issues without
| "removing the log from their own eye," because what each of us
| see as ethical issues with other actors in the social space
| differs. Typically we have no problem with our own actions and
| abhor anything that otherwise inconveniences us. But that also
| makes me question whether ethics is even a real thing, or whether
| it's just a rhetorical cudgel with which we try to beat other
| people into our preferred behavior.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| Ethics is philosophically a real thing -- but it's not a real
| thing as a system of governance.
|
| I think "business ethics" has become so prominent, only because
| it enables unethical people a means to subjugate a populous of
| mostly ethical people. If you think that's too harsh, consider
| that traditional ethics is usually in polar opposition to the
| Reaganite imperative that the primary responsibility of
| businesses is to make money for their shareholders.
|
| Clearly, if you believe that surveillance capitalism is
| unethical -- then you find yourself in between two opposing
| ethical definitions. Now your only choice is which one to pick,
| make money or not.
|
| What kind of business leaders emerge from this?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think I have a broader point here, but I do want to
| note that ACM is (of course) more significantly than a
| corporation, a professional association. The idea that
| professions should have codes of ethics goes back to a couple
| hundred BC, right? Of course, just about as old is the idea of
| professionals violating those codes for $$$.
|
| > A person could reasonably reflect on personalized advertising
| and ask: "what concrete harms have been done?" I think it would
| be hard to point out much that is unambiguous. People like to
| bring up Cambridge Analytica or social media misinformation,
| but neither case is necessarily advertising related.
|
| IMO one aspect of being an ethical person is considering
| ambiguity to be resolved in the 'bad' direction. This shouldn't
| terminate thought on the topic, just lead to further
| investigation by those who want to do something ad related. Are
| there ambiguous harms? (I haven't thought much about the
| underlying morality of ads themselves -- I find them annoying
| as a consumer but they aren't my field).
| saagarjha wrote:
| > The whole notion of calling a given thing unethical in modern
| discourse is interesting to me, because there is not just one
| ethics. A person could reasonably reflect on personalized
| advertising and ask: "what concrete harms have been done?"
|
| Most ethical systems consider performing actions with a lack of
| transparency and consent to be unethical. Often even if there
| is a benefit to the subject.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Big talk from an organization that not even three years ago had
| an article with this line: "At my company, ... [w]e, quite
| literally, think only about ourselves and our personal profit. "
| DonaldPShimoda wrote:
| > Big talk from an organization
|
| It's not an organization -- it's Moshe Vardi.
|
| _Communications_ is essentially a venue for editorials
| targeted at members of the ACM. Publications in
| _Communications_ do not necessarily reflect the values of the
| ACM itself as an organization. (Publications in
| _Communications_ are also not peer-reviewed.)
|
| This is evident even just from the text of the linked article,
| considering the author explicitly calls out the ACM for failing
| to consider what he believes to be important issues:
|
| > I have seen practically no serious discussion in the ACM
| community of its relationship with surveillance-capitalism
| corporations. For example, the ACM Turing Award, ACM's highest
| award, is now accompanied by a prize of US$1 million, supported
| by Google.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| For more context I believe this is the article the quote is
| from: https://m-cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/11/240379-the-
| benefits...
|
| _At my company, Zerocracy, we practice a #NoAltruism policy.
| We, quite literally, think only about ourselves and our
| personal profit. This might sound a bit harsh. Isn 't it better
| to play nice and try to appease your clients? In an ideal
| world, maybe. But here's what we have learned about clients:
| they also practice #NoAltruism._
|
| _Clients want to keep costs low, and if they can, they will
| pass costs onto outside companies. That 's why we decided to
| "get lazy" and only do what we are paid to do. We won't go out
| of our way to improve a project, refactor, or fix code unless
| we are getting paid for it._
| nomdep wrote:
| Words by the CEO of Zerocracy, a Russian company
| mistrial9 wrote:
| it is not illegal or unethical to be a Russian; that means
| doing things that people do, like publish papers or try to
| be influential to other thinking people. Vilification of an
| opponent is yet another ugly aspect of this man-made
| disaster occurring now.
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