Google collects sensitive data on every hapless internet user. A contest "for social good" should start by helping Google brainstorm a new business model. The one they have now is poison.

Given Google is already doing that (collecting anonymized data), wouldn't it be overall better if it also puts that to some good use?

> Given Google is already doing that (collecting anonymized data), wouldn't it be overall better if it also puts that to some good use?

Given Google is already doing surreptitious stuff and is generally anti-privacy, it ought to look at stop doing those first. Stealing from people and doing "good" with that is not an excuse for stealing, especially when most of the victims are common folk (even if one follows a Robin Hood principle).

Also, I didn't get the part about Google "collecting anonymized data". Google collects precise, personally identifiable data because that's what pays the bills for its chosen business model (similar to Facebook, which is far worse). Anonymization may happen down the line for certain purposes and anonymized data may be all that Google is able to get from certain sources.

Stealing from people? huh?

No. Look at what's happening at a meta level and nonlinear effects. Yes, the social good projects will have some small positive effect in the world, but they also end up buying a lot of positive PR for Google, thus allowing them to continue their malpractices in their main business. Skepticism of the kind in this thread informs Google that their positive image right now is actually fragile, and that they should up their ante if they want to continue to be looked at as having a positive impact on the world, which is a critical advantage they use to gather the best talent.

The analogy for this comment is:

"The defendant is already doing that (committing crimes), wouldn't it be better if we permitted them to continue doing so as long as they're putting a portion of their spoils to good use?"

And don't forget to pat them on the back for their community service.

Even that is a very generous analogy, as it assumes that Google's AI contest will actually result in outcomes that produce some social benefit, rather than a few temporary initiatives that look good, provide near-zero real benefit to society, and really provide Google with technical AI innovations that are of some small use to their business.

You may not consider collecting "anonymised" data to be a bad thing, but you'll note that you inexplicably introduced the "anonymised" descriptor twisting the original commenter's "sensitive data"!?

We pitched our AI project to Google around last year. They moved us to next stage, asked for business documents, proof of concept that it works and then just vanished.

Just like how other people complain about their job interviewing process, there was no response from any of their team members, no email, no rejection. I know ideas are dime a dozen but please don't stomp on startup's dreams no matter how tiny we are.

While I don't completely disagree with you,

If somebody known to kidnap dogs opened a free doggy daycare service, I would expect people to question his motives.

By doing this, I suspect Google will get access to a significant number of social datasets which were earlier not available to it.

Well that's not a rhetorical question really. I think based on recent past experience with Google people have actual concerns about whether it will be for social good in the long term. For me this is similar to what's happened in the GMO space. Potentially great technology that gets more of a bad name than it deserves because the players involved have done some really disturbing stuff before they ever got involved in GMO. Getting back to tech, would it be overly negative to have a little healthy paranoia about Facebook contributing to privacy research?

I'm out of the loop. What has the food/GMO industry done that is disturbing?

The industry as a whole? I'm not sure I could make that claim. And I'm somewhat well informed having close family that work in agriculture. But take one major player as an example, Monsanto (now owned by Bayer):

- Major producer of DDT. Evidence that DDT was causing widespread environmental damage was clear by the 1960s but it took the US government until the 1970s to finally ban it. Then the industry sued the US government to try to overturn the ban. Who tries to continue selling a product that has caused widespread environmental damage?

- Producer of Agent Orange. Another "perfectly safe" chemical. Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems as a result of Agent Orange contamination. I'm not sure how many US veterans were affected.

- Major producer of PCBs. Which are later banned due to being highly environmentally toxic, cause cancer in animals and probably humans too.

- Producer of bovine growth hormone, another "perfectly safe chemical". rBST has not been allowed since at least 2000 on the market in Canada, or since 1990 the European Union. Other countries have banned it. I don't think the studies on how it might affect humans are conclusive but there are concerns. For sure the studies on how it can negatively affect cows are more solid.

- They have been convicted of bribery in order to get government approval.

At what point do you stop trusting? And again, I don't mean the science and GMOs themselves. I mean the company who is making claims that GMOs are perfectly safe for both humans and the environment. Scientists are not so bold. Read the studies to see disclaimers and healthy doubt in those studies. Usually specifically spelled out. Disclaimers and doubts that are never mentioned by Monsanto when they publicly speak about their products. If they started being far more careful with their "perfectly safe" rhetoric, I might change my mind about them. So far, that hasn't happened.

I can't say if on the whole Monsanto has been somewhat responsible and well-behaved as a company. But I can say that based on just the list above, I would be very hesitant to trust any claims they make about the safety of any agricultural product, especially those involving chemicals.

I'm sure that someone can / will come in with a defense of Monsanto or arguments about each point above. The devil surely is in the details. But who has time to sort through hundreds of studies and court cases? Fair or not, we will continue using heuristics to decide who we trust. Maybe Facebook does in fact treat my data ethically and each time they get caught with privacy concerns or taken to court it was "just an honest mistake". Are you willing to spend tens or hundreds of hours of your free time trying to figure that out? Or will you use a heuristic and just be cautious with trusting what Facebook will do with your data?

They managed to revolutionize agriculture and stave off the starvation apocalypse that the people of the '50s and '60s were predicting.

... oh, I misread your question; I thought you asked "How did the food / GMO industry save the world?"

And now everybody has cancer and the food is tasteless.

I’m seeing little negativity, just the realities of dispensing with unwarranted optimism. Shorting of pithing myself, it’s goinf to be hard to ignore what Google is and show it works just because they throw a (for them) small amount of money at something which so far only sounds good. My experience of Google is that they excel at marketing their own supposed best intentions while delivering the worst of them.

It’s not negativity to have been conscious and capable of forming long-term memories for the past decade, sorry. I’m also wondering if you have now or previously had any relationship with Google?

No, I don't and have never had relationship with Google except being a (non-commercial) user of their services. I would have given a disclaimer had I been.

My experience of Google is that they excel at marketing their own supposed best intentions while delivering the worst of them.

>> My personal experience has actually been quite opposite. I think had they been marketing their services properly (and not just to geeks) they'd have been at a much better place than they are today. I think Apple is a world class standard when it comes to marketing.

I work in Google Cloud and this comment makes me sad. Not everyone is a sellout and I didn't forfeit my soul for a nice paycheck.

What motivates me to go to work every day is making our customers' life as easy as possible. And not because I want to make Google even more profitable, but because running on GCP is greener. In fact, since 2017 all Google operations are offset by renewable energy: https://sustainability.google/reports/environmental-report-2... .

So, please don't generalize. I firmly believe that the vast majority of Googlers still care and are not evil.

(these are my personal thoughts and by no mean I speak on behalf of Google itself).

Who would you rather have it governed by? Facebook? Microsoft? Amazon? Wall Street? DARPA? US Govt? EU? China? Russia?

At an abstract level: any organization, run by humans, with a lot of power over critical aspects of our life is bound to get corrupted due to that power. Its just that some organizations are less bad than others. And I believe Google isn't much worse than many other realistic alternatives.

That's a false, uh, decachotomy (?), it doesn't have to be a centralized organization of any kind at all

It doesn't have to be, but things seem to be inevitably gravitating towards a centralized model because it seems people care the most about their User Experience and everything else is secondary (privacy, monopoly, monoculture, worker abuse, etc).

The word you are looking for is dichotomy.

I think the parent commenter wanted to emphasize that there are more than 2 options (di- = 2, deca- = 10) to choose from...

But false decachotomy would imply there are more than 10 options. Seems weirdly specific.

Such an organization, designed to respect input from consumers, workers, and global community members affected by negative externalities might be called a "co-op."

It's a matter of oversight, transparency, accountability and motivation. In the case of Google, they have very little oversight, nearly zero transparency, they are accountable to only their shareholders, and their motives are exclusively profit.

They have no interest, or even means of producing, a publically good internet. They can and will only produce an internet that is best suited to make them money. And with that there will be inherent conflicts with what is best for the users.

At least with a government you get some of the transparency and oversight, public control and no profit motive (if you cap campaign financing that is)

Some organization structures are better suited to do different things.

That's exactly the kind of unreasonable hatred I'm talking about. Wise people would understand that these companies (including the ones who you think are much better) are only as 'evil' as the law of the land allows them to be, and most of them are 'for profit' and will do everything they can to maximize the profit still being in the legal framework. Which company do you like instead?

They are spending millions of dollars lobbying and poisoning the law.

And again, all companies with enough money to be able to do that are doing that.

That is why I avoid all these companies. Everybody have the option to do that aswell.

Chill dude. I have almost never seen such generalizations are justified. "Sellout"? please.