7 ms·

Why I Left Google DeepMind

200 points by eatitraw 2mo ago

ChrisArchitect 2mo ago
ICYMI Previously on the author's source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271
nmatej1 2mo ago
[flagged]
meta_gunslinger 2mo ago
[flagged]
fuadnafiz98 2mo ago
[flagged]
negamax 2mo ago
You (the org) brought fire to the masses. How that fire is used (to build or burn the cities) is not for you do decide Stand by and share your ethics concern. But this isn't misalignment. A lot of AI use cases will be constraint/reigned in through governance evolution at every scale
- tw04 2mo ago
  Comparing it to fire isn’t really an apt comparison. You developed the nuclear bomb. Would you give free access to every human on the planet to do with it as they see fit? Or would you demand responsible guardrails from the start? AI companies want it both ways. This will both redefine humanity as we know it, but also nobody should try to enforce any guardrails. Why? Because it might hurt profits. Either it’s snake oil and not as revolutionary as claimed, or people should be facing prison time for trying to claim “I just invented it and gave everyone access, I can’t be held responsible for what happens next”.
  - negamax 2mo ago
    Nuclear wasn't governed until the destruction was seen. There's no reason to believe AI wouldn't follow a similar path
    - tw04 2mo ago
      The bomb was literally developed under a top secret program, and they didn’t hand out functioning bombs to the general public at any point in time before “the destruction was seen”.
      - negamax 2mo ago
        It was created at wartime. Not as a civilian project. Developed as a weapon. And other countries were developing nuclear weapons as science of it was never a secret Destruction display did caused the governments to come together and build frameworks and structures to avoid the repeat of it
        tw04 2mo ago
        Which again, is completely different than giving access to every human being on the planet, then trying to figure out how to regulate it later. Out of the gate access was restricted to government use, and a limited subset of governments at that. There was never a point in time it was handed out to any private citizen to do with as they pleased. As for “we haven’t seen the destruction yet” - huh? Between the proliferation of hacks utilizing AI and drone warfare in ukraine we’ve ABSOLUTELY seen the destruction already.
  - leoqa 2mo ago
    I mean, does enabling ICE to be more effective actually represent a harm? ICE has authority to do the things it’s doing. The courts are the appropriate venue to check that authority. Two agents murdering citizens is a criminal matter completely unrelated to Google’s relationship with DHS. It feels like AI empowering scams and facilitating post-truth is more harm.
vintagedave 2mo ago
Very long to read, but highly principled. I feel his desperation. Powerful people can too easily do little, and ignore their consciences. I appreciate he named those he spoke to; it came across as fair, and makes them accountable for what they did or did not do.
- fuzzfactor 2mo ago
  >Powerful people can too easily do little, and ignore their consciences. IOW: >Congress remains a potted plant in the corner.
readthenotes1 2mo ago
I am outraged to find gambling in this casino! What sort of ethics bubble was the author living in to believe that Google was anything but solely focused on achieving shareholder value?
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  The same that believes in HR marketing like Do No Evil.
  - Ygg2 2mo ago
    Pretty sure they ditched that motto long time ago.
    - pjmlp 2mo ago
      They did, still doesn't change the kind of bubble we are talking about.
    - andriy_koval 2mo ago
      Still there: And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up! https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
- Ygg2 2mo ago
  I wonder if in a few years, there'll be heads of Google paraphrasing the old skit "You know, in hindsight, allowing autonomous AI drones to carry fusion bombs was a bad move, but for that one quarter we really earned a lot of shareholder value"
- skew-aberration 2mo ago
  Not only that but his outrage is narrowly focused on contemporary US politics. Billions of people access food, shelter, medicine, education, etc, only by the rapidly diminishing leverage their labor provides (or doesn't provide) them. These people presumably never so much as picked up a book, or evenly briefly entertained a thought about a person outside their own immediate social circle.
aleph_minus_one 2mo ago
Primary source: https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind
fragmede 2mo ago
more comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271
gyanchawdhary 2mo ago
[flagged]
- golly_ned 2mo ago
  For having a moral position on a moral topic? If he were strictly self-interested we'd have no objection to it in this culture.
  - gyanchawdhary 2mo ago
    if you personally haven't been born or raised in a third-world country (or, as I'm sure he'd prefer to call it, a "developing country" because, of course ... that sounds more morally refined) ... then taking a moral high ground and lecturing others about it is a luxury born of privilege .. if he were truly as virtuous as he claims .. he'd live like the Unabomber .. in a cabin, disconnected from modern society, giving up all that DeepMind money and abandoning the comforts of civilisation .. that would be a genuine act of conviction .. but instead .. he quits (which insitself is a luxery) keeps the wealth, and writes a blog post about it .. what an entitled muppet
iluvcommunism 2mo ago
[dead]
hmokiguess 2mo ago
However way people that are deep into the cog wake up I support it. Once the truth was seen you didn't bend and stood by your principles, it must have been very challenging to navigate that from the inside with your entire identity tied to and associated to the thing you ended up growing out from. Appreciate you, welcome to your new life. May you find peace and continue to do good work next.
tdb7893 2mo ago
I'll always support someone taking a personal stand about what they can or cannot do. Ethical issues always invite the most criticism but my experience is that it's rare for anyone to really give anything up for their ethics (this person likely has money saved up and will land on their feet but even this situation is more than most people would do).
cloudie78 2mo ago
Wait, only now you realised that the “do no evil” meant jack shit? How blind and ignorant really are you? Let me attempt to save you from another horrifying realisation: it has hardly anything do with who’s in the office right now. The horrors and evil will persist.
1-6 2mo ago
The virtue signaling is too much on this article. It could have been a well-written piece, but they had to make it about moral grandstanding.
- vintagedave 2mo ago
  Being ethical is the point.
- golly_ned 2mo ago
  Any case where someone takes a moral position is now called "virtue signaling" and "grandstanding."
  - gtowey 2mo ago
    I suppose if you work in the Soylent Green factory it's easier to demonize those who speak out against it than to consider upending your own station.
- layer8 2mo ago
  “Virtue signaling” is when you don’t take meaningful action. The article author went out of their way to take meaningful action.
  - woopwoop 2mo ago
    I'm like the Japanese soldier who kept fighting into the 1970s on this, but actually signalling is about taking costly action. When people call something virtue signalling what they usually mean is that it's cheap talk, but this is wrong. The whole point of signalling is that it's costly. A more correct application of virtue signalling would be something like those people who contort their lives to genuinely try to produce zero garbage. This is a truly costly action, but it is signalling in the sense that it is more about showing that one cares by being effortful than actually doing something effectual.
    - dpark 2mo ago
adverbly 2mo ago
If you want to do good in the world: You are not alone! Its not easy to do at this moment in time, but be patient, consistent, and spread your attitude to others.
mark_l_watson 2mo ago
Great show of principles and character, +1000 to the author. What can we "regular people" do? My approach, which is very inconvenient, is to try as much as possible to not feed my consumer spending money to tech giants. In some cases I fail at this (e.g., my wife and I will always buy a family membership for YouTube Plus with music; we still order some things online from Amazon) but I make an effort. I have been an AI practitioner for over 40 years and I want to use the very best AI coding agents, etc., but I am forcing myself to just use access to cheaper open weight models from smaller US inferencing companies (my last $$ subscription runs out in a few days).
leoh 2mo ago
I am not sure how to square the posts that AI is a bubble with the ones that say AI is so terrible; lately I am somewhat inclined to especially believe the former.
- gtowey 2mo ago
  Just look at the dot com bust; the Internet and e-commerce were definitely real, but the over leveraged investments into poor business models driven by fomo had to crash before sanity returned.
thisislife2 2mo ago
Direct source - https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind This may be controversial (and I will understand if the mods want to remove this comment) but this made me really wonder if westerners like him are actually aware of the ongoing genocide in Gaza (and now in West Bank and Lebanon) that is also supported by Google tech (amongst others)? I ask because if the death of 2 people in America bothered him so much, shouldn't the death of around 75,000+ Palestinians have stirred his conscience much earlier? - How US Big Tech supports Israel’s AI-powered genocide and apartheid - https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/12/how-us-big-tech-supports-israels-ai-powered-genocide-and-apartheid https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/12/how-us-big-tech... - Google's Role in Supporting Israel's Genocide in Gaza - https://matttutt.me/googles-role-in-supporting-israels-genocide-in-gaza/ https://matttutt.me/googles-role-in-supporting-israels-genoc...
- forafistfulof 2mo ago
  And why would you "understand the moderators"? I don't know what kind of principles all these people have, but of course they all know about Gaza.
  - thisislife2 2mo ago
    By "understand", I was not alluding to their political leanings. What I was implying is that some rational comments can still lead to inflamed / emotional discussions (which is against our community guidelines) or lead to unnecessary flagging which increases a mods workload and thus I would understand if the mods delete my comment for these reasons. > but of course they all know about Gaza. Are you sure? What exactly do they believe is happening in Gaza? Remember that former President Biden himself claimed there is no genocide happening in Gaza. Trump has said anything about a genocide since he got elected. Western media has mostly preferred to whitewash the genocide. TikTok in America has now been taken over by an American BigTech to censor all contents on the genocide and pro-Palestinian causes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if many Americans still remain ignorant about the genocide or don't believe that what is happening in Gaza (and elsewhere) is a genocide.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
throwaway26727 2mo ago
> learned that Google sells its Cloud services to the relevant agencies within DHS Can a US company refuse the US government as a customer?
- staticautomatic 2mo ago
  Depends on your definition of "customer."
rhmn_mdov 2mo ago
Thanks for trying
superxpro12 2mo ago
The author misses one GLARING explaination as to everyone's motivations... money. Literally... just money. There's so much money right now. Enough to eliminate all principles. What is particularly heartbreaking is that the nerds were supposed to be the gatekeepers of good. And we're just watching this fall apart in realtime. Principles matter little when starting at a $1,000,000,000 check deposited directly into your personal bank account.
- esseph 2mo ago
  > There's so much money right now. Enough to eliminate all principles. > Principles matter little when starting at a $1,000,000,000 check deposited directly into your personal bank account. Maybe for some of us, sure.

200 points by eatitraw 2mo ago

ICYMI Previously on the author's source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271

nmatej1 2mo ago

[flagged]

meta_gunslinger 2mo ago

[flagged]

fuadnafiz98 2mo ago

[flagged]

negamax 2mo ago

You (the org) brought fire to the masses. How that fire is used (to build or burn the cities) is not for you do decide Stand by and share your ethics concern. But this isn't misalignment. A lot of AI use cases will be constraint/reigned in through governance evolution at every scale

tw04 2mo ago
Comparing it to fire isn’t really an apt comparison. You developed the nuclear bomb. Would you give free access to every human on the planet to do with it as they see fit? Or would you demand responsible guardrails from the start? AI companies want it both ways. This will both redefine humanity as we know it, but also nobody should try to enforce any guardrails. Why? Because it might hurt profits. Either it’s snake oil and not as revolutionary as claimed, or people should be facing prison time for trying to claim “I just invented it and gave everyone access, I can’t be held responsible for what happens next”.
- negamax 2mo ago
  Nuclear wasn't governed until the destruction was seen. There's no reason to believe AI wouldn't follow a similar path
  - tw04 2mo ago
    The bomb was literally developed under a top secret program, and they didn’t hand out functioning bombs to the general public at any point in time before “the destruction was seen”.
    - negamax 2mo ago
      It was created at wartime. Not as a civilian project. Developed as a weapon. And other countries were developing nuclear weapons as science of it was never a secret Destruction display did caused the governments to come together and build frameworks and structures to avoid the repeat of it
      - tw04 2mo ago
        Which again, is completely different than giving access to every human being on the planet, then trying to figure out how to regulate it later. Out of the gate access was restricted to government use, and a limited subset of governments at that. There was never a point in time it was handed out to any private citizen to do with as they pleased. As for “we haven’t seen the destruction yet” - huh? Between the proliferation of hacks utilizing AI and drone warfare in ukraine we’ve ABSOLUTELY seen the destruction already.
- leoqa 2mo ago
  I mean, does enabling ICE to be more effective actually represent a harm? ICE has authority to do the things it’s doing. The courts are the appropriate venue to check that authority. Two agents murdering citizens is a criminal matter completely unrelated to Google’s relationship with DHS. It feels like AI empowering scams and facilitating post-truth is more harm.

vintagedave 2mo ago

Very long to read, but highly principled. I feel his desperation. Powerful people can too easily do little, and ignore their consciences. I appreciate he named those he spoke to; it came across as fair, and makes them accountable for what they did or did not do.

fuzzfactor 2mo ago
>Powerful people can too easily do little, and ignore their consciences. IOW: >Congress remains a potted plant in the corner.

readthenotes1 2mo ago

I am outraged to find gambling in this casino! What sort of ethics bubble was the author living in to believe that Google was anything but solely focused on achieving shareholder value?

pjmlp 2mo ago
The same that believes in HR marketing like Do No Evil.
- Ygg2 2mo ago
  Pretty sure they ditched that motto long time ago.
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    They did, still doesn't change the kind of bubble we are talking about.
  - andriy_koval 2mo ago
    Still there: And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up! https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
Ygg2 2mo ago
I wonder if in a few years, there'll be heads of Google paraphrasing the old skit "You know, in hindsight, allowing autonomous AI drones to carry fusion bombs was a bad move, but for that one quarter we really earned a lot of shareholder value"
skew-aberration 2mo ago
Not only that but his outrage is narrowly focused on contemporary US politics. Billions of people access food, shelter, medicine, education, etc, only by the rapidly diminishing leverage their labor provides (or doesn't provide) them. These people presumably never so much as picked up a book, or evenly briefly entertained a thought about a person outside their own immediate social circle.

aleph_minus_one 2mo ago

Primary source: https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind

fragmede 2mo ago

more comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271

gyanchawdhary 2mo ago

[flagged]

golly_ned 2mo ago
For having a moral position on a moral topic? If he were strictly self-interested we'd have no objection to it in this culture.
- gyanchawdhary 2mo ago
  if you personally haven't been born or raised in a third-world country (or, as I'm sure he'd prefer to call it, a "developing country" because, of course ... that sounds more morally refined) ... then taking a moral high ground and lecturing others about it is a luxury born of privilege .. if he were truly as virtuous as he claims .. he'd live like the Unabomber .. in a cabin, disconnected from modern society, giving up all that DeepMind money and abandoning the comforts of civilisation .. that would be a genuine act of conviction .. but instead .. he quits (which insitself is a luxery) keeps the wealth, and writes a blog post about it .. what an entitled muppet

iluvcommunism 2mo ago

[dead]

hmokiguess 2mo ago

However way people that are deep into the cog wake up I support it. Once the truth was seen you didn't bend and stood by your principles, it must have been very challenging to navigate that from the inside with your entire identity tied to and associated to the thing you ended up growing out from. Appreciate you, welcome to your new life. May you find peace and continue to do good work next.

tdb7893 2mo ago

I'll always support someone taking a personal stand about what they can or cannot do. Ethical issues always invite the most criticism but my experience is that it's rare for anyone to really give anything up for their ethics (this person likely has money saved up and will land on their feet but even this situation is more than most people would do).

cloudie78 2mo ago

Wait, only now you realised that the “do no evil” meant jack shit? How blind and ignorant really are you? Let me attempt to save you from another horrifying realisation: it has hardly anything do with who’s in the office right now. The horrors and evil will persist.

1-6 2mo ago

The virtue signaling is too much on this article. It could have been a well-written piece, but they had to make it about moral grandstanding.

vintagedave 2mo ago
Being ethical is the point.
golly_ned 2mo ago
Any case where someone takes a moral position is now called "virtue signaling" and "grandstanding."
- gtowey 2mo ago
  I suppose if you work in the Soylent Green factory it's easier to demonize those who speak out against it than to consider upending your own station.
layer8 2mo ago
“Virtue signaling” is when you don’t take meaningful action. The article author went out of their way to take meaningful action.
- woopwoop 2mo ago
  I'm like the Japanese soldier who kept fighting into the 1970s on this, but actually signalling is about taking costly action. When people call something virtue signalling what they usually mean is that it's cheap talk, but this is wrong. The whole point of signalling is that it's costly. A more correct application of virtue signalling would be something like those people who contort their lives to genuinely try to produce zero garbage. This is a truly costly action, but it is signalling in the sense that it is more about showing that one cares by being effortful than actually doing something effectual.
  - dpark 2mo ago

adverbly 2mo ago

If you want to do good in the world: You are not alone! Its not easy to do at this moment in time, but be patient, consistent, and spread your attitude to others.

mark_l_watson 2mo ago

Great show of principles and character, +1000 to the author. What can we "regular people" do? My approach, which is very inconvenient, is to try as much as possible to not feed my consumer spending money to tech giants. In some cases I fail at this (e.g., my wife and I will always buy a family membership for YouTube Plus with music; we still order some things online from Amazon) but I make an effort. I have been an AI practitioner for over 40 years and I want to use the very best AI coding agents, etc., but I am forcing myself to just use access to cheaper open weight models from smaller US inferencing companies (my last $$ subscription runs out in a few days).

leoh 2mo ago

I am not sure how to square the posts that AI is a bubble with the ones that say AI is so terrible; lately I am somewhat inclined to especially believe the former.

gtowey 2mo ago
Just look at the dot com bust; the Internet and e-commerce were definitely real, but the over leveraged investments into poor business models driven by fomo had to crash before sanity returned.

thisislife2 2mo ago

Direct source - https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind This may be controversial (and I will understand if the mods want to remove this comment) but this made me really wonder if westerners like him are actually aware of the ongoing genocide in Gaza (and now in West Bank and Lebanon) that is also supported by Google tech (amongst others)? I ask because if the death of 2 people in America bothered him so much, shouldn't the death of around 75,000+ Palestinians have stirred his conscience much earlier? - How US Big Tech supports Israel’s AI-powered genocide and apartheid - https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/12/how-us-big-tech-supports-israels-ai-powered-genocide-and-apartheid https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/12/how-us-big-tech... - Google's Role in Supporting Israel's Genocide in Gaza - https://matttutt.me/googles-role-in-supporting-israels-genocide-in-gaza/ https://matttutt.me/googles-role-in-supporting-israels-genoc...

forafistfulof 2mo ago
And why would you "understand the moderators"? I don't know what kind of principles all these people have, but of course they all know about Gaza.
- thisislife2 2mo ago
  By "understand", I was not alluding to their political leanings. What I was implying is that some rational comments can still lead to inflamed / emotional discussions (which is against our community guidelines) or lead to unnecessary flagging which increases a mods workload and thus I would understand if the mods delete my comment for these reasons. > but of course they all know about Gaza. Are you sure? What exactly do they believe is happening in Gaza? Remember that former President Biden himself claimed there is no genocide happening in Gaza. Trump has said anything about a genocide since he got elected. Western media has mostly preferred to whitewash the genocide. TikTok in America has now been taken over by an American BigTech to censor all contents on the genocide and pro-Palestinian causes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if many Americans still remain ignorant about the genocide or don't believe that what is happening in Gaza (and elsewhere) is a genocide.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

throwaway26727 2mo ago

> learned that Google sells its Cloud services to the relevant agencies within DHS Can a US company refuse the US government as a customer?

staticautomatic 2mo ago
Depends on your definition of "customer."

rhmn_mdov 2mo ago

Thanks for trying

superxpro12 2mo ago

The author misses one GLARING explaination as to everyone's motivations... money. Literally... just money. There's so much money right now. Enough to eliminate all principles. What is particularly heartbreaking is that the nerds were supposed to be the gatekeepers of good. And we're just watching this fall apart in realtime. Principles matter little when starting at a $1,000,000,000 check deposited directly into your personal bank account.

esseph 2mo ago
> There's so much money right now. Enough to eliminate all principles. > Principles matter little when starting at a $1,000,000,000 check deposited directly into your personal bank account. Maybe for some of us, sure.