Re:AI at Google: our principles
by themacguffinman on Thursday June 07, 2018 @05:29PM
(#17260452)
"Don't be evil" is incredibly vague and practically meaningless. What the hell is evil, and since when did everyone agree on what evil means? It's obvious to you that they're getting "evil", it certainly isn't obvious to me.
Is explicitly circumventing a browser’s privacy setting evil?
How about shaking down a competitor? [2]
[1] http://fortune.com/2016/08/30/google-safari-class-action/
[2] https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/05/19/skyhook-got-...
collusion to keep salaries down may not be evil in the super-villain sense, but it's hard to see as ethical.
Not being evil has always been a side-show to the main event: the enormous wealth-generation that paid for all the good stuff. It's still the wealth-generation in the drivers seat.
Even disregarding the issue of how "evil" is defined, there is another level of vagueness: when does one become evil, as opposed to only doing some evil? Arguably, one could do some amount of evil deeds without actually being evil.
The above is sometimes mentioned in discussion, were people point out that the motto is "don't be evil" and not "don't do evil".
They already had a public standard that people actually believed in for a good many years: *Don't be evil."
They've been palpably moving away from that each year, and it's been obvious in their statements, documents, as well as actions.