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A second Google A.I. researcher says the company fired her:
Two months after the jarring departure of a well-known artificial intelligence researcher at Google, a second A.I. researcher at the company said she was fired after criticizing the way it has treated employees who were working on ways to address bias and toxicity in its artificial intelligence systems.
Margaret Mitchell, known as Meg, who was one of the leaders of Google's Ethical A.I. team, sent a tweet on Friday afternoon saying merely: "I'm fired."
Google confirmed that her employment had been terminated. "After conducting a review of this manager's conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct," read a statement from the company.
The statement went on to claim that Dr. Mitchell had violated the company's security policies by lifting confidential documents and private employee data from the Google network. The company said previously that Dr. Mitchell had tried to remove such files, the news site Axios reported last month.
[...] Dr. Mitchell's post on Twitter comes less than two months after Timnit Gebru, the other leader of the Ethical A.I. team at Google, said that she had been fired by the company after criticizing its approach to minority hiring as well as its approach to bias in A.I. In the wake of Dr. Gebru's departure from the company, Dr. Mitchell strongly and publicly criticized Google's stance on the matter.
[...] Google announced in a blog post yesterday that an executive at the company, Marian Croak, who is Black, will oversee a new group inside the company dedicated to responsible A.I.
Apart from the sanitized press statements, does anybody know why this is happening at Google?
Also at: Wired, WION Web Team, and Reuters
Margaret Mitchell's entries on Wikipedia and LinkedIn.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @03:57PM (29 children)
A deeply unethical company who believes in nothing other than their own power marketed itself to appeal far left social justice types for reasons I still don't really understand. Because they had to see that eventually their chickens would come home to roost. Weird.
Anyhow, it leads to an obvious and predictable conflict. Google preaches identity politics, social justice, blah blah. In reality they are happy building military weapons for the US, building government tracking search engines for China with pesky terms like "human rights" pre-censored, so forth and so on. All they really believe is their own power, wealth, and influence. The people they hire realize finally that what a company (or person) pretends to be, and what they really are - are often radically different, a conflict emerges, and Google wins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:03PM (12 children)
And in this specific case I'd wager a lot that the researcher in question was attempting to dox the people whose critiques of the other researcher ended up leading to her termination.
Google internally runs a customized file system that integrates source control into the file system itself. I expect this file system also makes surveillance of employee usage of company digital resources trivial, as a purely coincidental perk.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:18PM (11 children)
Plausible. But completely unsupported speculation; it appears.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:36PM (10 children)
It's supported (though not proven of course) by Google's statement which suggests she was terminated for accessing/downloading "confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:42PM (9 children)
Easy presumption to rebut; just need a shred of additional evidence.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:42PM (8 children)
Face it, she was a disruptive, difficult, antagonistic worker that Google got rid of because of her negative attitude.
Just by her comments it is obvious she is one of those people that do not work well with others because of her superior-over-others attitude. Her interpretation of what is ethical was blinded by her extreme left-wing progressive fanaticism. Her superiors noticed this and received numerous formal complaints about her toxicity behavior and finally decided to get rid of her.
All Google did was get rid of the trash. People that worked with her, along with fired ethic woman#1, have been breathing much easier, less tense, and more relaxed since.
Good for GOOGLE for standing up to these progressive trash.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:49PM (7 children)
It's extremely hard to tell who the bad guys are.
Possibilities:
A) The worker was a woke cancellation fanatic and was turning the workplace toxic (she gathered data for doxing purposes). To improve morale, Google fired her.
B) The worker was the victim of a woke cancellation crowd, she gathered data for self-protection, but Google aided and abetted the mob by firing her.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:06PM
No, it's easy. Google is.
And maybe the woketards the company put in important positions too.
(Score: 2, Informative) by hemocyanin on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:10PM (4 children)
It appears Meg is woke:
http://www.m-mitchell.com/gender/ [m-mitchell.com]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:14PM (3 children)
How many privileged white women have been burned now, claiming that they represent blacks, or Indians, or whatever? Pocahontas was the first of many.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @01:28AM (2 children)
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 22 2021, @01:48AM
Whatever. I can't imagine why the minority wants a privileged white woman speaking for them. It makes as much sense as voting for either Kamala or Biden to represent minorities - both have shit for track records. Gotta keep those superpredators working on the chain gang, or in the fire fighting gang!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday February 24 2021, @03:53AM
Correct, there is.
"You don’t have to be a member of a minority to want everyone to be treated fairly."
That's right, and that's fine. You should want everyone to be treated fairly.
But you should beware the temptation to white knight.
Here's an example. Sara (just made her up, it's a hypothetical) is struggling with a task. I walk up, look the situation for a moment, then extend a finger and point directly at the problem. She follows my finger, takes my point into account and suddenly it all works. And then she makes a nervous joke, let's say there's an implication that the mental acuity I just demonstrated is a property related to my prominent nose.
In another context, that could be a pretty ugly thing to say; but in fact Sara and I are friends, and there's a good chance she heard that joke from me first. While it might look to an outsider who lacks context like she's denigrating me; that's just not accurate. When you, as a third party, a bystander, stick your nose into that situation and get offended /on my behalf/ about something that didn't actually offend me, you don't make the situation better, no matter how genuinely that may have been your intent. What do you actually accomplish? Making people afraid to crack jokes around me? How on earth do you think that will help me? Or help anyone?
No, it's good to want everyone to be treated fairly - but it's bad to be hypersensitive to offense, and it's extremely dangerous to get offended on behalf of someone other than yourself. Show the minorities you claim you want to help a little respect. You don't get to decide whether or not I'm offended, you don't get to decide that I /should/ be offended, you don't get to go be offended on my behalf about something that didn't bother me in the first place. If you think I need your help then you could /ask me/ and wait for a response, instead of just taking it on yourself to judge for me, like you think I'm your child.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 22 2021, @01:45AM
False dichotomy. They can both be bad guys.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:04PM (2 children)
Yeah that, or she was just another uppity bitch.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:59PM (1 child)
Google realizes what a big mistake it was to hire all of these 'uppity' progressive trash woke nutjob employees, so Google is just weeding out the worst of the worst of the worst of these types. Hopefully this is the start of countless expulsions of workers that are unable and unwilling to work with other humans.
What is revealing is that she was fired on the spot! Companies usually wait until the next round of layoffs or reorganization to get rid of these toxic people, so to get rid of her so rapidly means for sure she was anything but a decent worker, and/or person.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:10PM
I for one welcome our benevolent corporate overlords who diligently weed out the indecent trash ruining it for the rest of us.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:17PM (1 child)
Your confusion is understandable. Let me give you some temporal depth.
Google was not always a deeply unethical company; at least not on the surface. /I/ always considered it such, but I am cursed with hyperopia. The founders seem to have really thought they had found a loophole, a way to get obscenely wealthy without being evil.
And they did; assuming they got out in time, and assuming that getting out on time gives absolution on building something you must have known would eventually become the beast. Questionable assumptions the both.
But put yourself in their place. They would desperately love to be wealthy. Who wouldn't? And they could so cleanly do it, they could confine their direct involvement to the don't be evil times, they could sell out at the right time, all the bad stuff would happen after; and they'd still be hideously wealthy. Even good people are tempted by that. Imagine being able to maintain your current life, but give $5m every year to charity on top of that!
Left wing and social justice were far from synonymous at the time. They still aren't today, by the way. But it was a good time for social justice in the left wing; a time when their fervor was rewarded and few had been warned of their religion. Lots of seemingly left-wing people at the time were committed social justice brownshirts. And it was easy, as a liberal at the time, to tolerate them. The right always had brownshirts. Not a bad thing if we get a few of our own?
Was a bad thing, in retrospect, but if you have any sympathy in you, must see how easy it was. How innocent.
"All they really believe is their own power, wealth, and influence."
Yes. It's a government. Built by a government; could never have existed otherwise.
It's time for them to be held to the bill of rights.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Monday February 22 2021, @12:34PM
Arik, in your esteemed opinion, when along the timeline would that have been? 2004? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:08PM (9 children)
At a guess, you were never a young nerd. Remember, these guys were young nerds, when Google got started. They weren't so much "unethical", as "uneducated and missing an ethics compass". Smart kids, but techies, who probably weren't all that "with it" when it came to society. The young boobs read some news now and then and like most kids, thought that some shit needed fixing.
At some point, they found themselves wielding considerable power, and thought that they should wield that power "for good". That whole "don't be evil" thing.
Alas, without any moral or ethical training, or education, they simply don't know how to "don't be evil". They would have done better to find an old Southern Baptist preacher, or a Catholic priest, or a Hindu monk to guide them in their business practices. Almost anyone with conservative roots would have been better than their air-headed flight into social justice.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:20PM (3 children)
> Catholic priest
Not enough young boys to interest them. Might do better attracting serial killers tho.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:02PM (2 children)
I thought you might volunteer for the job. Your painted chest and buffalo horns will really impress those young kids!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:44PM (1 child)
That's what True Conservatives wear, unlike those RINO faggots sending death threats to Senators.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @12:20PM
There's also a Rhino now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:47PM
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 22 2021, @01:51AM (3 children)
Dude, you don't need moral or ethical training to not be a shithead. All you have to do is not be a shithead and not being a shithead is easy enough to master by simply observing the types of basic actions that you consider shithead-ish in other folks. Unfortunately, properly defining the types of basic actions is more difficult than most folks can manage nowadays. Like it's not a dick move to silence you but a noble one to silence people disagreeing with you, it's a dick move to silence anyone's sincerely held beliefs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 22 2021, @03:58AM (2 children)
You said it, not me.
Given that so many people fail to understand the basics, how do you expect people to automagically understand the tough questions? Some knucklehead will say, "That's what lawyers are for!" To which, I'll have to reply "Bullshit!" Lawyers put on a charade of being ethical and moral, but their life blood is The Law. If ethics aren't spelled out in a lawbook, lawyers don't know or understand them, ditto with morals.
Meanwhile, we have hordes of politicians and "business leaders" who could benefit if they had any sort of a spiritual leader. They really don't understand what is wrong with stealing candy from a baby.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 22 2021, @04:45AM
Inform them they're being a shithead and what fundamental flavor of shithead they're being. If they don't know, they can't correct it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DECbot on Monday February 22 2021, @04:03PM
FUCK YOU! It's not "stealing!" It's redistribution! Wealth^WCandy redistribution. Only obese assholes like me understand candy and thus I should have it all so I can fairly distribute it to all you deplorables. /sarc
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @10:08PM
I can hear your white privilege. Stop being white and just die.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/20/whistleblower-coca-cola-uses-antiracist-training-that-tells-employees-try-to-be-less-white/ [thefederalist.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:03PM (18 children)
It's hard to know who to pull for here. Google's new motto is 'let's be evil' but it seems likely this person was one of the early proponents of the change, so am I supposed to care?
Maybe that's completely unfair. I hope so. But without additional detail a guess is all that's possible.
Anonymous leakers want to enlighten me? Feel free. Best way to do it is to mention details that are easily verifiable and critical to the case; ones which a number of people other than you are aware of.
And yeah, don't post it from an employer administered computer, or network. D'oh.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:15PM (12 children)
Take this, and will likely be an increasing number of incidents for what they are - a scenario where you can enjoy schadenfreude on both accounts. Google should not have hired while advocating for values it does not hold. And people shouldn't have engaged in so damn much cognitive dissonance to think the world's largest advertising company, engaging in non-stop digital surveillance of society - in cahoots with government to operate a surveillance state, was going to be anything (in reality) like what they mentioned.
"Nooglers" or new hires at Google get outfitted with a goofy Google color scheme (which is to say, childish) helicopter beanie to identify them as such. It's just fun and meant to build a sense of belonging and playfulness. But there's also an obvious ulterior motive there. A former partner of mine was a senior Googler. He was an otherwise intelligent guy, but he drank the kool-aid so hard that he simply could not even imagine anything he involved himself in (which was alot) or anything Google was doing was anything short of God's work. The playful beanies become part of an extended cult-like indoctrination, and it works. And it works because most people that come to work at Google *want* it all to be true. Convincing a man of a lie he wants to be true is infinitely easier than convincing a man of any truth he doesn't want to accept.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:21PM (11 children)
You don’t need AI to notice that all the firings that make the news are women.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:25PM (9 children)
It's not news when a male is fired. It's news when a male keeps his job. Welcome to 2021.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:54PM (8 children)
Google is symptomatic of what’s sick in current hyper capitalism.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:39PM (4 children)
For a very inclusive definition of "ethics" to include non-ethical practices. Besides, gender is a construct.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @10:34PM
> Besides, gender is a construct.
No, gender is the manifestation of the reproductive sex role. Sociopathic Justice Wankers only use the "social construct" argument when they're gas lighting. The biological female card remains playable when they need to play the victim. "Ethics"!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:26PM (2 children)
The two are transposable.
Sexual or gender orientation - who you want to fuck with
Sex or gender - what you identify as.
“There’s no difference between “waat sex do you want to fuck” and “what gender do you want to fuck”.
Same as “what’s your sex” and “what’s your gender.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @12:34PM (1 child)
What do I say if I want to ask a person which cromosomes they have?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:45PM
If you have to ask, you don't want to know. What would be the point?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @12:29PM (2 children)
"openly misogynistic James Damore" is a falsehood. James Damore never claimed he was a misogynist. It doesn't mean that Damore being a misogynist is disproven, that would also be a false claim. What I remember him saying was that men and women are statistically different in specific domains, and that is a scientifically proven statement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @05:01PM (1 child)
What if I today choose to identify as female? Will that suddenly make me different in those specific domains?
And if I re-identify as male next week?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @07:03PM
There is no way for me to tell where you as an individual is placed on a statistical graph. If you belong to the median you would probably already be statistically similar to women as a group, unless you identify as female just to spite my comment ;)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:01PM
Woah woah woah... women AND alt-right tards (https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/11/google-in-alt-rights-crosshairs-after-firing-engineer/>).
Aka the precious snowflakes of the STEM world.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:18PM (4 children)
Post it from management’s computer. We all know that (a) security rules don’t apply to them, and (b) the password is on a post-it under the keyboard.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:43PM (3 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:03PM
That's just a management myth to give the impression they're doing something important.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:15PM (1 child)
The manager has an incentive to suppress any evidence they were so stupid as to keep their passwords on post-it’s under the keyboard. It would negatively impact stock valuation to display such incompetent management.
It’s like banks try to suppress news stories about them being robbed. Or defrauded.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:41PM
But best is to make sure they genuinely have no idea who did it. Not just that it would embarrass them to admit how they know you did it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:31PM (36 children)
How come these people never learn? What kind of shit scientists are they? It's not that this is the first person at Google (or similar or any company) that was just canned due to them opening their mouth about things it should have been shut about.
The issue appears to be the same as last time, employee still believe she is working in academia and not in the private sector. Things common in academia rarely fly in the private sector no matter how cool and progressive the company is or claim to be, no boss likes to be talked back at and the company doesn't like when you denigrate their product or make public faults with it.
Employees with opinions that talk (or write) to much are a problem. Google are becoming like companies of old, they purge the trouble makers.
Perhaps this whole lets hire the progressive, feelgood crowd and soft-science people working in ethics trying to quantify feelings have just come to an end. Google is now taking every opportunity they can grasp at to weed these people out that are poisoning the company. The people that appear to spend a very large amount of company time doing non-company things, things that can not be turned into profit for the company. In fact a lot of their work appears to be a negative impact on the bottom line -- how many contracts for the government, law enforcement and military etc have they voiced their concerns about and complained about? I lost track.
If the news stated here is correct, since she didn't have a comment one can only assume it's correct, and she among other things removed data from the company that she wasn't allowed to then that is enough reason for termination. So she wanted more "multiculturalism" or non-white/yellow people based on the color of their skin and not their abilities to be hired. Good bye, your box of personal belonging are waiting with security and you can have it back when you hand over your id, keys and phone. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:08PM (28 children)
There's an implicit acceptance in our culture of "Suck it up buttercup" as always being the right answer. Don't like your job? Suck it up buttercup. The manager is a douchebag? Ditto ditto.
In this case, it's google making money by essentially being a 3 letter agency and trying to dupe young talented engineers to do that kind of work. Don't like it? Suck. It. Up. Buttercup.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:29PM (24 children)
There is a part of that "suck it up buttercup" culture that is true. But at the same time you have a personal responsibility to. Don't like working for a company that makes money selling AI products to governments -- get another job. Put up or STFU! It's somewhat funny that the last few people now have both been in ethics but can't take a stand for their beliefs and lose. But instead run crying when they get fired instead of getting praised. It's that or these people are apparently so deluded that they believe that they are the company and that their feelings should dictate company business and policy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:39PM (23 children)
Well in some sense We The Employees are the company. Putting up or STFU is a false dichotomy. Deliberate - martyrdom or suck it up. In the old days, the King would cut off your head for disloyalty (putting up). Or you toiled in the field - or you imposed the same dichotomy on your fellow man (aka became evil).
Nowadays we vote for the king. Perhaps one day we will vote for our boss?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:56PM (10 children)
But if you go to work for someone else is it really fair for you to have an (or demand) an opinion on how they chose to do business? You agree to work for them, not to shit talk them all day long -- that said one might not rule out the other but I doubt you'll be an employee for long.
That said in this specific case since it appears that Mitchell (the latest one) and Gebru (the previous one) both came from the same team, they co-lead it or something I gather from the links in the article. At this point I would be more inclined to believe that there is/was something utterly fucked in that team where they created their only little bubble or culture and that has now had to be weeded out cause it was causing problems for the company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:41PM (9 children)
Why not? Business is a cooperative affair.
Disgruntled employees can bankrupt your company. And management stupidity, unchecked, WILL turn your product into another Boeing 737MAX. Wouldn’t have happened if they had cared more about their employees instead of outsourcing to $2/hour “software engineers” in India. Bumping in to $9/hr after it was leaked didn’t fix the management fuckup thinking that led to the problem. Firing whoever made the decision, their boss, and THEIR boss, would have been a first step in changing the culture, but oh noes …
Henry Ford was an asshole, but he understood the value of putting a good chunk of profits back into worker pay, resulting in him paying several times as much per day per worker than the competition while increasing productivity to the point that the last tin lizzies coming off the assembly line sold for 1/5 the price of the original production.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:55PM (3 children)
Not yet, no. Maybe** it should be, but it isn't so today.
---
** I sometimes wonder. It's not like the coops as economical entities are free of risks. Among others, overburdening bureaucracy is one of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @01:15AM (2 children)
All business is cooperating - even sole traders need customers and suppliers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 22 2021, @02:00AM (1 child)
All businesses involves a "degree of cooperation", but most of this "cooperation" is based on "I'll do it if we can agree on a sort of contract first".
That's a bit of stretch on the meaning of "cooperation". Can go with the stretching to the extreme of "If you do a work for somebody under coercion, it is still cooperation"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:49PM
You do the work, and split the credit with me. That's the parasite model we call "normal" in recent history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @12:56AM (4 children)
> Henry Ford was...
I heard it that way first, but a more recent explanation makes it worth revisiting Ford history: Compared to the old way of craft/guild type work, the Model T production line was so dehumanizing that Ford had to pay more to keep workers on the job.
I'm not sure which version is correct.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @01:24AM (2 children)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @04:20PM (1 child)
People love to recount that little snippet, ignoring a few key facts.
If you tried to slip a Model T past a current government, you'd not even get to crash testing. They'd laugh you right out of the office. The technology involved in building them was vastly simpler and cheaper to assemble than anything even under consideration today. Monocoque design? Look elsewhere. Electric starters, airbags, electronic engine management, catalytic converters, any of that fancy modern stuff? Nope. If we had the Model T today, we could probably crank them out better, faster and (after inflation) cheaper, but we can't. They're regulated out of existence.
The functional equivalent would be something like a motorcycle with a sidecar, which you can get at employee pricing for under or around $10K. So, if you're making at least $200/day ($25 an hour, not at all outlandish for a skilled worker, it's about $50K/year) you're in the same ballpark as back then.
If you want the comparable price for an entry-level Ford today? Don't bother, because not only didn't they build anything like it, they outright couldn't have. The technologies didn't exist, and neither did the regulatory mandates.
The favourite analysis is also incorrect anyway, because back then labour was widely available - it was the way that things were done. You could pull fifty kids off the farms, show them the wrenches and presses and within a week or two you'd have things rolling along fairly well. The level of knowledge and sophistication of methods today is a country mile beyond what was in practice then. Sure, there were all sorts of subtleties to the craft of, for example, steaming wood to shape it, and the masters of joinery were wizards - but that hasn't gone away either, we've just chosen different technologies (not that steaming wood is forgotten, but you get the point).
Just as an illustration of the march of technology, an old machinist recounted that after the first world war they could machine precisions that before it, they couldn't even measure. Ford was really the classic example of the synergy between capital, information and labour. The information in this case was the factory organisation that compensated for the monumental inefficiency of prior arrangements, meaning that his labour costs were largely accounted for by massive efficiency gains in other ways.
But it makes for a cute standalone story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:08AM
Ford is starting at $17 last I heard.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday February 22 2021, @04:14PM
I'd suggest they are both true. The guys from the old ways found it dehumanizing as it didn't let them practice their craft and demonstrate their expertise. They could build an entire car by themselves. The new way only let them install the left fender all day--an insult to their trade and skill. On the contrary, unskilled laborers lined up to take a position because it paid well and all they had to do was install the left fender--something that only took days to master. They didn't have to submit themselves to a guild and apprentice for years before they could achieve a fair wage.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:15PM (8 children)
Tell that to the investors. Try such a speech at the next board of directors meeting. FFS, some of you are deluded. So long as you are saying what the board wants to hear, you have value. The moment you sing in discord, you're history.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:22PM (5 children)
Without people to do actual work, investors are standing around with their dick in their hands.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:55PM
Does that mean you have some Gamestop shares for sale?
That is what "doing the actual work" means these days, isn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:58PM (1 child)
The problem with that theory is supply and demand. Now get back to work peasant, before I give your job to someone who likes kissing my ass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:09PM
Who made you boss? Me and a few colleagues with pitchforks have come to negotiate.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:01PM (1 child)
No, that's YOUR dick in her hand. Watch, as she puts it in her desk drawer, and slams the drawer shut!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:50PM
Aww I was hoping you would say "mouth". Much better ending.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:57PM (1 child)
And you like it this way? No, seriously.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 22 2021, @12:26AM
I've been the discordant note all of my life. Thanks for noticing!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:49PM (2 children)
LOL.
Are you thinking of an economy dominated by coops or something?
I reckon there should be a period of dystopia in between for the humans to start valuing society over profit. Until then, unethical practices guarantee a competitive advantage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @01:35AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 22 2021, @01:55AM
Yes, it's a step forward in comparison with the USofA, but they're still not voting for who their boss is, are they?
I mean, no vote on who is the CEO (if they don't hold shares) or who is their reporting manager.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:48PM (2 children)
The key place where "suck it up, buttercup" is the default solution is when you have a problem, and aren't willing to fix it, or have overly high expectations that can't be met. Some unresolvable situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:16PM (1 child)
The thing is, "suck it up" gets you that person's minimum effort for as long as it takes him to find another job. You'll only be left with the ones too pathetic to even do that.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:52PM
Which is fine. The person solved their own problem.
Exactly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:36PM (2 children)
Wait until Google gets some old-school smarts, and doesn't fire troublemakers, just quietly reassigns them to an EXCITING DEPARTMENT in which CRITICAL HUSH-HUSH RESEARCH is being done.
And it's ten miles outside Fairbanks, or somewhere near Twenty-Nine Palms, or even in today's system, work-from-home forever.
Give it a cool name, like Porcupine Industries. In fact, divest the whole group and transfer people to it.
Then give them some encrypted papers to sort and shuffle and argue about forever. Or maybe design games for AIs or something. And write off the taxes on their total failure to accomplish anything of note.
It's rather like an organism forming an abscess. Less fuss, gets them out of the way of the rest, and when they get bored and look for other jobs? Give 'em a pat on the head, some feel-good severance pay and a boilerplate reference.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:45PM
It already exists - it's called UCLA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:12PM
EXCITING DEPARTMENT in which CRITICAL HUSH-HUSH RESEARCH
"Google Labs" and all the follow-on "moon shot" projects
Which are slowly killed off while the people from Wall Street who are now in charge
tighten the purse strings.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by helel on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:36PM (3 children)
Historically when big companies have fired scientists for speaking out it's the scientists that have been in the right. Repeated firings over the same issue only lends credence to the researchers concerns.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:27PM (1 child)
Clearing out the rotten scientists makes room for multiple Chinese workerbees who will slave away uncritically making dysfunctional gadgets. Forget quality, feel the authoritarian rush.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @01:38AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @07:59PM
Implying these are "scientists" in any meaningful use of the term.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @04:40PM (14 children)
"were working on ways to address bias and toxicity" - "there were multiple violations of our code of conduct"
Live by the sword, die by the sword. Build career around CoC, be fired by use of CoC.
Somehow this kind of people always believe the traps they lay won't be used to catch them. They are unique, special, totally smarter than all the other schemers in all the last 10,000 years...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:09PM (11 children)
Nah, they've just drunk their own kool-aid way too hard. They truly think they're in some grand righteous battle against racism, hate, and discrimination. As their grand enemies, phantasmal windmills, seem to parry every blow, they must resort to grander and more elaborate means of saving the world. That their eventual and inevitable fate is little different than that of Don Quixote's triumphant return home speaks only to fact that history has a rather poor imagination, seemingly incapable of doing anything other than repeating itself.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:18PM (10 children)
> grand righteous battle against racism, hate, and discrimination
You say that like it's not historical fact.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:08PM (1 child)
Indeed it is. Much as war is a historical fact. And as Quixote thrust himself towards the windmills, that he saw as ferocious giants intent on destroying mankind, his intent was noble. And his intentions were no less noble as he set his sights upon targets made not of wood and canvas, but of flesh and blood. Yet the consequences of such became much more dire. He became the villain of the very society he sought to save. Cervantes was no genius of prose nor creativity. He was simply narrating the tired repetitions of history in metaphor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:11PM
tl;dr = let me pronounce wisdom from my ivory tower
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:03PM (7 children)
There is nothing wrong with working for the advancement of your own race, unless you're white, of course, then it has a negative term seared into the mind of every school child. "Hate" is a highly subjective tool for criminalization of righteous anger, and censorship of deserved criticism. Discrimination is every human's natural born right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @07:14PM (5 children)
You sound like one of the poor oppressed Proud Boys saving us from ourselves, like a Randian ubermensch. Thank YOU sir for your services to Western civilization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:02PM (1 child)
He has a point. There is an NAACP.
Where is the NAAPWP ? (NAA Poor White People)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:22PM
There are no "poor white people". Joe Biden already told you that "poor kids are just as smart as white kids". Pay attention, you hillbillie!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:12PM
https://nypost.com/2021/02/20/nyc-educator-fired-after-sharing-holocaust-story-refusing-wakanda-salute/ [nypost.com]
https://nypost.com/2021/02/20/nyc-educator-fired-for-refusing-black-panther-salute-suit/ [nypost.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:10PM (1 child)
The Proud Boys are a multi-ethnic group. Democrats are so desperate to still have a KKK group that they cast this group as one because they NEED ONE. Need bogeymen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:20PM
+1 for the Proud Boys, now aren't they the bastion of progressive ideals!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @12:38PM
I don't think I understand what you mean by "working for the advancement of your race", if the majority is not against you, what the fuck are you working to accomplish?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday February 21 2021, @05:31PM
If ethics has to do with uniformly applying a code of conduct, maybe this is actually a testbed for the AI itself. Or could make a sci-fi short story about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @11:37PM