Did she "torpedo" their efforts, or merely point out that it was already holed below the waterline, by design?

> or merely point out that it was already holed below the waterline, by design?

That assumes some humility and objectiveness from her higher-ups. "Oh you publicly criticized our project, behind which some of us have staked our reputation. And you created a major negative PR event as well. Thank you for that! We finally see our mistake and we'll apologize and move on". In some hypothetical rational universe it might play out like that, but in reality I don't see how that was supposed to turn out without some repercussions for her.

It perhaps assumes a company which was actively and seriously interested in the area of AI ethics.

Ding ding ding!

You are commenting on different things. She pointed out the political oriented people on the ai committee who knew absolutely nothing about technology or ai. They were just prominent conservatives, who had no apparent reason to be there. Pointing out something like that is vastly different than saying you killed your own project. Pointing out what appear to be politically connected but otherwise useless people on leadership groups is a good thing I think.

I don't understand the argument that someone participating on an ethics panel has to be an expert on the tech. The more important thing is that they should be conversant with ethics.

The questions involved have to do with should we build this tech, not how to build this tech. To argue otherwise means that the vast majority of people should not be allowed to have opinions on the ethics of nuclear weapons, medical procedures, or any other topic where they are not subject matter experts.

AI tech and the ethics of using it is rightly a political topic, since it has the potential to affect everyone on the planet.

Preemptively saying that certain viewpoints have no place at the table simply means the political discussion will move from a friendlier environment within Google to the (likely more hostile to Google's interests) environment of general politics in the U.S. Personally I think that might be a better outcome, but from Google's standpoint it's potentially a disaster since it might result in heavy regulation of their business.

You don't have to be an expert, but imho you should be someone who has a grasp of technology, science and the world on a very focused technology issue. If you are someone who denies humans impact the earth's climate, if you argue in favor of people who think the world is only 8,000 years old, I don't trust you to make choices about science based policy.

The NLRA protects concerted action by employees regarding working conditions. Arguably, this could fall under that definition.

How is an outside ethics panel going to affect their working conditions? The people on the panel don't have any say on employees' pay, promotions, disciplinary actions, assignments, or anything else that might affect their working conditions.

The idea was to have some people from outside the company look at the tech and its potential hazards and provide some input on the ethics of developing and deploying it. People inside the company said, No, we don't want that particular viewpoint to be have a seat at the table on this outside committee. The ethics panel had nothing at all to do with their working conditions.