One simple ethical rule that I live by:

If I ever find myself saying “if I don’t do this, somebody else will”, I don’t do the thing. It’s a good indicator that the thing in question is the wrong thing to do.

Other people will still do it. That’s true. There will always be evil people in this world. But it won’t be me. And that’s important.

That's a good and reasonable personal ethic, but it transfers into a (imo) poor, even disingenuous public discourse.

Let's say we're talking about the clickbait/trolling problem in political discourse. We can berate some prominent individual, but that individual is inevitable. If she wasn't doing the clickbait, someone else would be and we'd be beratying them.

Focusing on the individual when a problem is systemic can be empty, righteous moralising.

The individuals come together to create a society with rules. To be a part of society one must follow those rules.

Ethics, to me, have a place there, and it would be better in all cases to establish those rules or norms in your society, or your culture, rather than regressive actions like banning something.

Bans are a type of rule/norm.

I remember a documentary about drug dealers, and these were the exact words that they used to justify their deeds: "If I don't do it, someone else will, so it makes no difference".

Is case by case, in this case if they think is so bad, say selling hard drugs, should be a ban. Facial recognition banned is like AI banned under the same reasonings. Others will be doing it.

uhh wouldn't that mean you don't do anything? Not everything you don't do is evil ;)

A very noble approach, however in the life of business, moral has no place. Which is very unfortunate in my opinion. I couldn't imagine how the world would look like if everyone thought the way you do...

Doing something legal but immoral to boost your profit margins is by definition immoral. I don't know how some ceos sleep at night.

People who don't sleep at night when they do immoral things don't tend to become CEOs.

Probably on stacks of money.

In capitalism system everything is equated to money: ethics, success, self-worth.

To be exact, it is tied to short term earnings.

This same argument could be made about any decision to abstain from anything. If a country banned facial recognition the work could happen in another country. You can make it even more farcical by changing the act you abstain from: Why not kill someone? They will die eventually.

For any actor, their choice to do or not do something matters. It might not matter much, but it has some impact. I would not describe Amazon as a small player or having a small impact. Dismissing the importance of what they choose seems myopic. To return to your frame, I'd say that if Amazon stuck to its decision not to work on the technology it would be more meaningful than any national ban outside of, probably, the US or China.

In general - it seems like, if we don't like something, we should celebrate it not being done. Even if it's not done in some limited context. In fact, outside of a world government with effective law enforcement - all choices not to do things are limited. So it's really all we have!

Yes, AI regulation needs to be global to be effective.

The difference between "we should abstain from our moral values because everyone dies anyway in the end" and "we should find ways to pursue our moral values effectively" is substantial. You don't have to be nihilistic to not accept cheap signaling being sold as a solution to real problems.

Few corporations deciding to not do dirty work, just providing their lower-level cloud resources to thousands of smaller firms who will gladly compete for any kind of money -- that does not solve anything.

Stuff like GDPR can change at least something.

> AI regulation needs to be global to be effective. [...] not accept cheap signaling being sold as a solution to real problems.

Amazon making a pledge not to work on facial recognition does not seem like cheap signaling to me! Cheap signaling would be Google's "AI Ethics Board" staffed with people unlikely to make trouble while Google continues to work on AI. A pledge not to work on technology is an expensive signal!

Ideally, sure, to stop something everyone agrees not to do it. But history is stuffed full of examples where one company could have made a difference. Imagine if IBM refused to work with the Nazis or if Dow Chemical refused to sell agent orange to the US.

It is impossible to solve anything "forever." Facial recognition will be developed, but how long that takes and how well the world can grapple with the consequences matters!

At the time there was no alternative to IBM and their technology. Same can be said of Dow Chemicals.

Now there is competitors. Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud will gladly help anyone with facial recognition . See how evil America refuse to help you with your needs? We will because we care about your needs, China will support you.

That's incorrect.

There were other tabulating machines (for example the Bull[1]) and of course there were (and are) other deforesting agents. The governments in both cases would have found another supplier.

It also would have made a difference! There's a reason the Nazis picked IBM and the US picked Dow.

If it's the case that Amazon could do better work than Tencent and Alibaba - then their abstention is laudable. If it's the case that Amazon is inferior, then they'd get out-competed in a winner-take-all marketplace so they both save money and have clean hands. So win-win.

[1] http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/projet/bull_t30/tabu_t30.htm

If someone wants to pay you to do something immoral, then that means that you're the best/cheapest/some mix of that they found. If you refuse, you make an immoral act more expensive or reduce its "benefits".

That can be enough to reduce the cost/benefit ratio far enough that your potential customer does not consider it worth it anymore. If it does not, the next best option also has the option to refuse, and so on. Even if the immoral act eventually gets done, you have harmed the immoral actor, thus reducing their ability to act in the future -- and it's likely that you wouldn't approve of their future actions either.

Yeah, I never got this American Disdain for the State and regulations. Everything - health, pension, parental benefits, environmental restraint, repression of discrimination - ends up in the domain of corporate benevolence, the whims of the market and of shareholders.

If it’s not in the Law, it's just corporate marketing

It exists because the American government (or governments writ large around the world anyway) have had a poor track record of regulating things ethically. For example, the us government has not done a great job of ethically regulating native Americans, or, ethically regulating terrorism abroad, or maybe in more quotidian and economic terms, regulating the sale of loose cigarettes. It baffles the mind that one would want the same entity responsible for such large scale horrors responsible for deciding educational policy.

If you don't want to involve regulations resulting in people dying, we can look at regulating interior decorating, or hair braiding, neither of which was conducted in the public interest. Can you name the last 2000 regulations that have been enacted in the us? Can you be sure all of them were in the public interest?

Regardless of how well the democracy your government is based on is functioning, I have a rather hard time imagining that a corporation focused on maximizing shareholder profit would do anything better than a piss-poor job for the vast majority of the population.

there's a wide amount of space between 'regulation by government' and 'regulation by corporations'

Option A: Government regulation, sometimes fails(Article 7 and 11), sometimes get things right(GDPR).

Option B: Corporate entity self-regulates in favor of profit. consumer is screwed.

Corporations regulate not for public interest, but for profit, sometimes it happens that those two are aligned - but that is an exception - not a norm.

The point is that if enough ethically-minded people who believe facial recognition is bad see Amazon doing things like facial recognition the company will lose customers and staff. The people proposing a ban presumably feel there enough of those people now (and in the future) that Amazon's bottom line is under threat and it needs protecting from itself.

The idea of outsourcing your company's ethics to the government seems very shortsighted to me. Facial recognition may never be banned, yet privacy tech could become a strong factor in where developers want to work. Consequently Amazon are right to consider this sort of thing long before the government steps in.

I have probably a Pi radians stance from you. I don't believe Amazon (or Facebook or Google or ATT) will necessarily lose a meaningful number of customers. I don't think people are that cohesive in their thinking. It seems to be too easy to roll out benefits to the customer so they don't care about some abstract downside.

So if Amazon plays unethically, and plays well, and you are competing, you are going to be seriously hampered by not playing along too. And you will have a hard time justifying it to your shareholders or potential investors. Amazon couldn't even win this argument and the game's just starting.

I think ethical companies like the kinds of regulations that keep the playing field level and make ethical transgressions illegal. It gives them a strong support to make their ethical stand.

Look at all of the information that's being gathered today with no respect for the individual's privacy. I'm old enough that this is outrageous, and I really can't believe that people are standing for it. Yet it seems that every new app builder has to enter the market with a data-collecting free offering. If this were illegal, then they could compete on quality and price.

One thing I've learned as I've gone through some things is that if you're the only one in the game who's playing by the rules, you're going to lose.

Because the USA is failing to act on climate change (and join Paris), neither should the rest of the world? Then we can certainly abandon hope right now.

At the same time China is producing more banned CFC, no one is doing anything.

You've basically described the prisoner's dilemma. However, there are stable strategies where cooperation benefit all parties.

Would you care to elaborate on how these might be deployed to form policy on this particular issue?

What it would have achieved is to enlist Amazon as an ally in lobbying for the necessary legislation.

Corporations don't like to watch their competitors profit from things they are not allowed to do themselves.

Because when another company fills the void they'll know what happens if you don't think about these issues and risk getting shut down themselves.

That opens up the possibility of benevolent actors filling the void. Or, someone at least as bad but better at playing the government.

Doing the right thing can be excellent PR and boost customer acquisition and retention - especially when you are consumer facing.