Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For? (nytimes.com) 174
Across the technology industry, rank-and-file employees are demanding greater insight into how their companies are deploying the technology that they built. An anonymous reader shares a report: At Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, as well as at tech start-ups, engineers and technologists are increasingly asking whether the products they are working on are being used for surveillance in places like China or for military projects in the United States or elsewhere. That's a change from the past, when Silicon Valley workers typically developed products with little questioning about the social costs. It is also a sign of how some tech companies, which grew by serving consumers and businesses, are expanding more into government work. And the shift coincides with concerns in Silicon Valley about the Trump administration's policies and the larger role of technology in government.
"You can think you're building technology for one purpose, and then you find out it's really twisted," said Laura Nolan, 38, a senior software engineer who resigned from Google in June over the company's involvement in Project Maven, an effort to build artificial intelligence for the Department of Defense that could be used to target drone strikes. All of this has led to growing tensions between tech employees and managers. In recent months, workers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon have signed petitions and protested to executives over how some of the technology they helped create is being used. At smaller companies, engineers have begun asking more questions about ethics.
"You can think you're building technology for one purpose, and then you find out it's really twisted," said Laura Nolan, 38, a senior software engineer who resigned from Google in June over the company's involvement in Project Maven, an effort to build artificial intelligence for the Department of Defense that could be used to target drone strikes. All of this has led to growing tensions between tech employees and managers. In recent months, workers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon have signed petitions and protested to executives over how some of the technology they helped create is being used. At smaller companies, engineers have begun asking more questions about ethics.
The more (Score:1)
Re:The more (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA is just a series of anecdotes. The complainers are a small vocal minority, and it is far from clear that this is a real "trend" rather than just a media fad.
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It isn't like asking matters.
They'll tell everyone it is being built to save kittens from tress, when in fact it is killbot AI.
Re:The more (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a fair question, though, and the Progressive Social Media Complex will demand answers. If the application isn't actually secret (beyond NDA) I don't see why the companies wouldn't answer: they're going to find willing workers whatever it is. Honesty will benefit them far more than trying to hide stuff that will inevitably come out.
I mean, really, if you're building something with military application, wouldn't you want a team that thinks that sort of thing is cool, not a team that will stage a protest when they find out?
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Progressive Social Media Complex
LOL
https://www.vox.com/policy-and... [vox.com]
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Hey, it's not as big as the Military-Industrial Complex, but it's getting there.
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It's also about as progressive as the military-industrial complex judging by the incident I linked to (or Twitter historically handling rule violators who also happen to be conservative nutballs with kid gloves).
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Yeah, conservative stuff is banned constantly, but the one time something progressive accidentally gets caught up in the conservative-banning-machine, it's a big story. That link reads remarkably like this one [babylonbee.com]. "Unfortunately, our automation accidentally banned some fake news that was progressive, merely because the headline was a blatant lie. Any new system will have the occasional bug, and we humbly apologize for this one. We're taking steps to better train our algorithms."
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Yeah, conservative stuff is banned constantly,
Really? Can you point to even one example of someone being banned for calling for limited government or supply-side eceonomics? Because it seems that such a thing has never happened.
Or would you like to classify what most non-US governments would call hate speech, or outright abuse from someone on the right as "conservative stuff?"
Re: The more (Score:1)
No, conservatives are being banned for pointing out inconvenient facts that progressives don't like. You know, like pointing out the number of rapes and violent crimes committed by third world adult military age men who call themselves children, aided by NGOs who've made an industry out of assisting invaders who could never travel thousands of miles on their own. Rape, you see, is important when it involves a story from 36 years ago (that is not even rape btw) but it's clearly unimportant when committed e
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Or would you like to classify what most non-US governments would call hate speech, or outright abuse from someone on the right as "conservative stuff?"
Yes, I object strongly to the ridiculous redefinition by progressives of free speech as "hate speech", as of disagreement as "abuse". Tell me: is this hate speech or abuse? Of course, you can call for the death of all white men without consequence. [liveaction.org]
Not to mention social media's habit of just outright banning of political speech [liveaction.org] they disagree with.
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While I would like to agree with you, I feel that the first blow to corporate profits was hit when a
tiny protest at Google about somethings that help the USA government. I really don't expect this
to stop anytime soon... Small observation
it's very interesting to note, ( and I cite from my logistics and real estate background )
how many software and hardware firms are moving to Texas and other employer-friendly states.
And I'm even seeing it happen in Florida.
Before you mention it cost so much to rent on the we
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Re: The more (Score:1)
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So, in short, this is just a typical news story: at least as much false as true.
You are asking this now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not before.
They have been doing evil shit for a long while now.
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Obama
Trump
It truly doesn't matter.
They are both bowls of shit looking at each other in a mirror.
People who believe in either party are the idiots.
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Re: You are asking this now? (Score:1)
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Hmmm... actually, isn't the labor market tightening?
The most reliable indicator of the labor market that I've found in Silicon Valley is discarded lottery scratchers in the parking lot of convenience stores. After the Great Recession was officially over, I've picked up hundreds of discarded scratchers to enter into the Second Chance drawing. For the last several years I've been able to find a half-dozen discarded scratchers each month. I haven't found any discarded scratchers in the last six months. People are too busy working to play lotto scratchers.
Re: Tech employers respond: (Score:1)
Re:Tech employers respond: (Score:4, Insightful)
Be good little Nazi soldiers and know you'll never face a tribunal for just following orders.
Re:Tech employers respond: (Score:5, Insightful)
Be good little Nazi soldiers and know you'll never face a tribunal for just following orders.
I miss the days when invoking Godwin's law got you modded down rather than up. What the hell happened to Slashdot?
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We were invaded by the seven digit snowflakes. If you actually do remember, you must have updated your ID.
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Shut the hell up is what happened. /sarcasm*
* Remember when we didn't need to use "/sarcasm" at the end of our posts? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
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People made up emotionally satisfying stories and decided to believe them. It's not Slashdot, it's everywhere. Reality doesn't play any more because it's not dramatic enough for bored narcissists.
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Politics turned ugly(er) and Godwin himself called a moratorium on Godwin's law since the Nazi comparisons were increasingly valid.
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I miss the days when invoking Godwin's law got you modded down rather than up. What the hell happened to Slashdot?
Why do you ask a question like this? You know this answer, you seem to just be playing dumb: Nazis happened. Not figurative Nazis, actual Nazis wearing swastikas and talking about racial purity.
Godwin's law is a problem insofar as it represents people abandoning reasonable, proportionate discourse and invoking the most extreme thing that they can. Godwin's law is not a problem when you're talking about Nazis. Discussions about politics in the US have reached that point.
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Most honest historians believe America's best known dissident intellectual, Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of MIT, who has said over and over again, that all the US presidents after FDR would have been hanged if tried under the same Nuremberg Principles of International Law Nazi leaders were tried under.
Obama dropped 200,000 bombs killing and maiming tens of thousands of women and children, bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital and sent gunners in to kill the fleeing nurses and patients. Why isn't
Translation (Score:1, Insightful)
Let me fix that for you. "A small portion of the workforce of tech companies are concerned that the choices their employers are making goes counter to their personal political stance, and demand that their personal stance should dictate the company stance." There fixed.
At some point if you disagree with the way your employer does business, either:
1) get involved in business leadership to change the path
2) go work somewhere that matches your personal believes more closely
3) leave your politics at home and
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh yes, the ol' "get a job you don't like" fallacy that assumes jobs are a dime a dozen and that it's your own personal failing if you can't get one. Fuck off.
Companies seem to be getting more and more advantages and power in society and law over individuals. So it is understandable that individuals will behave this way. From a purely libertarian standpoint it's ugly but if libertarians want their ethics to be respected, they should reign in the power of corporations a little. Otherwise no one's going to care.
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If libertarians want their platform to be respected, they should respect it themselves and demand the revocation of all corporate charters immediately.
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Can't believe I'm gonna respond to an AC troll, but here goes...
Jobs are a dime a dozen. We have record low unemployment, and it's even better in tech. If you can't find a decent job in tech, that's on you. Now get the fuck off my lawn you moron.
Jobs pay a dime a dozen. I'm a new grad, two majors, both tech. Two internships and several years of part-time experience. Sure I can get a job, but only for 30-50% below market rate. Would you accept a position as a cloud infrastructure admin with security duties, 30% travel, no telework, need MCSE, CCNA, and a security cert within six months to keep the job starting at 50k a year?
Neither would I. So I have been waiting and applying for six months.
They won't hire you for non-entry-level because you haven't held down a job yet. Internships are not the same thing. I am not trying to crap on you, I'm just letting you know what most of us have had to deal with. You can probably find something north of 50k, but you won't do yourself any favors holding out too long.
Reflecting their Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
A bit late to the party, aren't we? I mean -- overall "Better late than never" still rings true, but it's hard to ignore the fact that tech titans have been doing things that are unethical in different ways for quite a while.
Amazon has been gobbling up larger chunks of the economy for a decade, and will likely face a breakup at some point.
Facebook ran unethical (no explicit consent) experiments in 2012 seeing who they could persuade to vote and who they couldn't.
Google had a "collect first, ask later" data policy, and their initial maps datasets were picked up by wardriving around the US storing everyone's open WiFi network data and taking photographs long before that was an accepted data-gathering norm.
Twitter kickbans whomever they like, which is fine, but makes a showing of it being an open discussion forum for international politics and routinely "just happens" to silence folks that don't match the political whims of the Bay.
Everyone else has been making Skinner boxes for a decade and a half, trying to find any way to keep folks more and more addicted to their specific forms of entertainment, in a way far more insidious than the tobacco industry ever did.
Apple... is doing basically okay.
I'm glad people are waking up to the power of the tech. It shouldn't have had to take Chinese dissident crackdowns to do it. And GPLv3+No-Military-Use-Because-I-Don't-Like-Your-View-On-SSM isn't the answer.
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What is unethical about Amazon? Amazon customers and employees are happy. And Amazon isn’t a monopoly like Google.
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Employees, not so much. Haven't you heard of their practices treating employees as automatons, with harsh working conditions for low pay?
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A lot of people complain because they get paid to complain. There's no info to suggest many genuine complaints.
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If I was being paid Amazon stocker wages, and someone was offering me money to complain, I'd probably take it. Especially if the combined income was enough to live on.
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Oh, I've seen plenty of online whinging from the "nerds get out" and "ZOMG gentrification" brigades.
But in real life I have a few friends who work for Amazon. Plus I've gotten to know a handful of the staff at their SF Popup Loft And while it's certainly not the most laid-back company; they have generally positive things to say about their work environment. And they are paid competitively for their positions and skill sets. Hell, Amazon's periodically thrown recruiters at me. And if their timing ever li
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Well... in fairness, Boeing is way up in Everett. Amazon, on the other hand, has actually taken over large swaths of downtown Seattle itself. So I can understand the concern.
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Amazon isn't a monopoly in the strict sense of the word only. Google isn't a monopoly like Amazon either.
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YouTube and Android are clearly monopolies.
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YouTube and Android are clearly monopolies.
... except that there are clear alternatives to both, and depending on how you measure it, neither is even the market leader.
Android is on more phones than iOS, but iOS has higher revenue and higher profit.
Tudou has fewer videos than YouTube, but has more viewers, and is more profitable.
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That's not the test of what's a monopoly.
If YouTube weren't a monopoly, Nasim Aghdam [businessinsider.com] might have just moved to a different platform rather than going to YouTube headquarters and shooting people when they took away her income. (Or maybe not, who knows what crazy people might do?) But there are no viable alternate platforms for people making video content to be discovered and monetize content -- YouTube has a monopoly.
Makers of smartphones use Android because Android is a monopoly. Makers of smartphones don
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Walmart customers and employees are happy too. So yes. What is unethical?
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And GPLv3+No-Military-Use-Because-I-Don't-Like-Your-View-On-SSM isn't the answer.
Had to look up SSM: Surface to Surface Missiles
Heat -seeking missiles
Re:Reflecting their Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
These things tend to go unnoticed because each step is a small and seemingly reasonable one.
Take Google as an example. If they had started with "we are going to photograph every public space, put it all online for public viewing, capture all WiFi SSIDs and map them, and then throw AI at it" someone might have balked.
What actually happened was someone suggested capturing images of streets and using image recognition to enhance their maps with information on street signs. Then the guys doing location services noticed that was happening and asked to add some wifi scanning for their systems, and oops they left packet capture enabled by mistake and got fined over it.
Later someone else suggested that all this imagery could be added to the user facing maps. And then the AI started working with it, teaching their machines to read building numbers and anything else they could.
And all the time they were getting mostly positive feedback. It's incredible how Google Maps shows you a pseudo-3D view now, with accurate building shapes because the AI looked at the satellite imagery and just figured out what the architecture was.
This is what a Chief Ethical Officer is supposed to think about, but apparently it doesn't work.
Virtue Signalling (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Virtue Signalling (Score:1)
True. Your eco vigilante anecdote isn't genuine at all.
Re:Virtue Signalling (Score:4, Insightful)
"This is about as genuine as when the ECO vigilantes would all pile into their Hummer to go protest some oil related activity and leave the place trashed."
This would be bad if it were true, but I somehow doubt ecology friendly types typically protest and "leave the place trashed".I'm sure its happened, especially depending on your definition of trashed, but I'd guess it is not the norm.
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There have been cases of eco protesters not cleaning up, but the part that doesn't get told is that it's because they were driven away with concussion grenades, firehoses, and rubber bullets before they could clean up.
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Good we need professional regulation (Score:2)
We just need a way of doing that isn't as outdated at what the legal and medical professions have. We don't want a protection racket or something the enshrines the outdated education model requiring degrees but we do need something to fall back on.
I hope these tech workers (Score:1)
Be it biological, cyber, or armed conflict. I hope they are the first to go
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Are the first to die a slow and painful death due to the fact that a true enemy of the state exploits the hole/vulnerability that this tech would have closed to kill citizens in mass
(emphasis added)
If only there were a religion-specific bioweapon...
Unethical work trickles downhill (Score:1)
You're building it for that fat six-figure paychec (Score:5, Insightful)
You're building it for that fat six-figure paycheck. There's your answer. Next!
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Corporations in general have a very easy answer to people who grow morals once they start receiving that wonderful paycheck. It usually involves removing that paycheck. People can go into the whole "we need more people that stand up for good!", but in reality if you want to pull something like this you stand a good chance of not being hired in that particu
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I can get that "fat six-figure paycheck" at a few thousand companies. So now I can be picky and work on things I believe in, as can most developers.
Re: You're building it for that fat six-figure pay (Score:2)
You canâ(TM)t get anywhere near as fat a paycheck outside just a handful of companies like Google, FB, Netflix and MS/Amazon, but the latter two only pay well if youâ(TM)re very senior (director and up). Between a $100k pay bump and doing something ethnically dubious, 99.999% of people will pick the former. Thatâ(TM)s why during each of the ethics shitstorms only a handful employees depart, and half of those were on their way out anyway.
Re: You're building it for that fat six-figure pa (Score:2)
Rewrote the sentence ruined the meaning: should be âoebetween $100k pay bump and NOT doing something ethically dubiousâ.
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I don't know where the hell you're looking, but $100k developer jobs are a dime a dozen. I'm a software hiring manager. If you can't find more than just Google, FB, Netflix and Amazon, you're not looking.
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$100k yes, $300-500k -- not so much. That's how much people are making at Google.
Re: You're building it for that fat six-figure pay (Score:2)
It's OK if ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's OK to use facial recognition as a convenient way to unlock your phone, but not to track you when you walk down the street.
It's OK to use facial recognition as a way to find friends by the pictures they post, but not to track your known associates in defying the government.
The tech is the same, just who uses it. If you want to object to selling it to China, why didn't you object to doing it for InstaFaceTwits?
Hm, no... it's not OK. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's OK to use facial recognition as a convenient way to unlock your phone, but not to track you when you walk down the street.
It's OK to use facial recognition as a way to find friends by the pictures they post, but not to track your known associates in defying the government.
The tech is the same, just who uses it. If you want to object to selling it to China, why didn't you object to doing it for InstaFaceTwits?
I think that's kind of the point - it DOES matter what it is being used for. Granted, you can't control how it's used after it's been created, but if you are developing something like facial recognition you KNOW it will be used for nefarious reasons at some point.
There are all kinds of things like this that I refuse to use - facial recognition, fingerprint readers, facebook, smart devices that monitor you (Echo, fitbit, etc.) My location on my phone is turned off, unless I need to use it. Webcams are unplugged when not in use. I'm not naive enough to think that I am still not being tracked by Google et al because we do live in the digital age. But I am not about just to give up all information about myself freely for goofy convenience.
Meh (Score:1)
When i was truck driving, i didnt get to pick & choose who i delivered loads for. The company said "go here & move that trailer to Saskatoon" and off you went.
When i was a short order cook, i didnt get to pick & choose who i made pancakes or fried chicken for... i didnt get to bitch when they went & put ketchup on the steaks. The job was cook things, so i cooked things.
I have had jobs in the past where i disagreed with the people i worked for and disliked them on a personal level... i left t
This shouldn't be partisan (Score:5, Insightful)
And the shift coincides with concerns in Silicon Valley about the Trump administration's policies and the larger role of technology in government.
While one would hope that they would be concerned no matter who's in office, it doesn't appear to be the case. It's just like the "Presidential Alert" that went out last week. Even though it was something started under the Obama administration, people were suing simply because it was Trump doing it. Would they be sharing their concerns if Hillary Clinton was president right now? People need to realize that it doesn't matter if it's your person or not who is in power, because eventually it's going to be someone who's not your person. Can you trust they aren't going to misuse your technology?
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Even though it was something started under the Obama administration, people were suing simply because it was Trump doing it. Would they be sharing their concerns if Hillary Clinton was president right now?
LOL. You don't think that there would be a huge swath of Americans who would absolutely freak out if Hillary sent out a Presidential Alert? There's no doubt that Trump himself would be at the head of that mob with torch and pitchfork in hand.
Re:This shouldn't be partisan (Score:5, Insightful)
Would they be sharing their concerns if Hillary Clinton was president right now?
No, but there would be a different group of people filing the law suits for much the same reason. A solid part of any electorate is more tribal than anything. To them, anything is permissible as long as their side is the one doing it. If it occurred to any of these people that eventually someone else might get to wield the power that they've created, we wouldn't have at least half of the mess we constantly find ourselves in.
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Would they be sharing their concerns if Hillary Clinton was president right now?
No, but there would be a different group of people filing the law suits for much the same reason. A solid part of any electorate is more tribal than anything. To them, anything is permissible as long as their side is the one doing it. If it occurred to any of these people that eventually someone else might get to wield the power that they've created, we wouldn't have at least half of the mess we constantly find ourselves in.
Google employees absolutely would be complaining about working with the military if Clinton had been elected.
What's maybe different is whether anyone in the media would bother to cover it.
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And I'm dead fucking serious.. Nobody makes decisions at a business but the guy who's name is over the door. Workers are owned, any ideas they have at the office belong the corporation. It's really your choice - if you don't like the direction a company is doing, or what it's doing with your work, leave. That's really the only choice you have.
You can start your own company, you can work somewhere else or you can shut
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Video games to Porn (Score:4, Funny)
Bullshit jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of what people do is useless. Myself I work in electronics hardware, I create next year's landfill.
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Weird. There's a McKesson is in my industrial park! I always wondered what they do, they have the newest cars in their (large) parking lot, the cleanest building, the best picnic tables, and the best employee events! I know this as I take my noon walks in my used perforated pants and worn-out shoes...
Open source is used all over the place (Score:2)
The same software can be used for many different applications. Do you stop working on Kafka because some spy agencies use it in their big data stack?
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People are seeing how the sausage is made! (Score:1)
I think this is one instance of a more general problem. People are getting more of a peek behind the curtain through social media, constant news coverage and the fact that politicians seem to telegraph their decisions through Twitter. IMO if we do end up destroying the US as we know it, historians are going to point to social media as a big driving force. People are seeing how the sausage is made and they don't like it. Corruption used to be hidden and although it sucks, it is and always will be the way thi
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Make popcorn (Score:2)
When you find out that your project is being used for evil, use it to make popcorn.
We Need Evil Technologies (Score:2)
While we certainly need freedom and protection against powerful interests, we also need technologies for offensive and defensive, including true military, use.
Russia, China, and various others exist that are not our friends. The consistently seek advantageous against us. We cannot pretend that we are not in a game of conquest when others around us most certainly are. That is just a fact.
It matters not (Score:2)
Why?
Because the outraged will end up building something even worse - being blinded by their outrage.
Because those who do actually care will be replaced by someone who doesn't - one of the purposes of outsourcing/H1B.
Is there no hope? Probably not - the world has reached critical mass of evil + idiots.