Why would I display a modicum of good faith and grace when google has actively, at every chance, shown that they don't act in good faith. Hell today they announced if school districts turn off Google's ai for students they won't let them use google search either.
If it's juicy enough presumably they could be an anonymous source for some journo. Which would still be breaking the NDA but good luck getting anywhere with that.
Usual noise from a very very small but very very vocal minority of trouble makers who are trying to force their own views on everyone else and run to the press to try and feel important and try to make a mountain out of a 3 or 4 person molehill.
I've not heard anyone at all talking about this in the office. Perhaps everyone is thinking it or talking about it privately, but I've not heard any of it period.
They're getting ignored by management because they're the usual agitators and over-opinionated who everyone hates dealing with. It's not surprising these people end up getting fired or let go, because no one likes working with them and so they don't get on good projects and don't get good feedback in reviews etc because they piss everyone else off. Then of course when they are fired (or jump before they are pushed) they run right back to the press about how they were sacked for reason X when really it's because they're a fucking jerk.
If this sounds like you: http://go/no-jerks is old has never been more applicable. Don't be a jerk.
if you read the article it actually outlines that this is happening in the UK, where whistleblowers are legally protected if what they choose to blow the whistle on is _in the public interest_ so actually this comment does seem pretty spot on: They don't have anything beyond moral disagreements on what the company is working on (the article mentions military applications of AI), and are thus taking a moralistic standpoint on applications which are otherwise within the laws of the UK. Otherwise they would be able to (and would legally be protected) if they spoke out.
In my ongoing experience with Googlers nobody in Google is functionally worried about anything but keeping moving up the ladder and trying to be on the “retirement level money asap” pathway.
They use words like "moralistic", "trouble makers", "opinionated", "agitators"..
All very useful framing to discredit the actitivists without actually addressing the issues.
It's a way to distract and defuse the situation by ad hominem attacks, typical strategy for suppressing workers' rights or anything that inconveniences the status quo.
I think personal criticism is 100% justified when criticising an individual's behaviour.
I have no direct experience of this, but it sounds like from the OP's comments that OP doesn't like the behaviour of these people - i.e. leaking things to the press, stirring up trouble, trying to assert their views regardless of others etc are personal behaviours which are 100% valid things to be criticised for. I don't think OP is attacking the ideas.
This workplace culture sounds toxic, but more importantly: given an array of numbers, can we partition it such that the each partition is a palindrome of a subsequent ? Asking for a friend who needs to pass a technical interview.
Yeah this is a perfect example of the behaviour OP is talking about I think (no direct experience). Just general arsehole behaviour, ultimatums to your employer (!!! ultimatums to your boss FFS! Unbelievable!), sending out shitograms to broad audiences that are furthering their own agenda and trying to force and assert their views/narrative etc.
"I got sacked because of my views/because I spoke up/because my employer is racist" Vs "I got myself sacked because I was an asshat".
Of course, who do you believe?
I think in life, I've found that on the whole (but not always) the more crazy and hysterical someone sounds, the less likely I am to believe them.
Haven't we already heard the worst of it? If you let a swarm of agents on the loose with a goal, they will get to all kind of nefarious activity in pursuit of that goal. What could possibly be worse than that?
I think there was some example of DeepMind models doing it, but under the control of a third party pen tester and the models stopped themselves.
Everyone hates on Google but they seem fairly competent at infra stuff. I don't think we've heard of any google-controlled (not third party using a Google model) felonies like we have from OpenAI and Anthropic?
Awareness is not change. What we've really seen is the incredibly high cost of true patriotism and the absence of action from government and citizens alike. And not just absence of action, but also rhetorical responses ranging anywhere from deflection to character assassination.
from TFA, I liked seeing this, considering how influential Google HR policy choices are across the valley and beyond: “Recently, we’ve updated our terms for new hires, which included removing the post-termination aspect of non-disparagement clauses.”
Ok, I'll say it.
The news is: "AI is not that powerful or functional".
Sure, can change some little things but not that much. And we are overspending on it.
I really don't understand how so many are so far detached from reality. Maybe AI hasn't revolutionized much of the physical world (yet), but its impacts to the digital world are profound, sweeping, and impossible to ignore.
Saying that "so many" are detached should make you think. I'm sure nobody says its not useful at all, just not THAT useful. It seems that most of the things its clearly better than a human, considering risks and real time saved, are in the end inconsequential.
Oh I'm sure that many of the current predictions on the future are absolutely wrong in many ways; I'm just stating the fact that the technology itself is certainly having an impact and will have a much greater impact into the future.
OK. I'm a consumer. Where are these impossible-to-ignore impacts? Most of what I'm seeing is my favorite communities getting washed away with a tidal wave of slop and "smart AI features" annoying me to death in all my favorite software. Programmers in my communities are saying they're 10-100x more productive but I am not seeing any effects of this at all from the outside.
We're eliminating decades worth of CVEs right now. Doesn't make products more functional, sure, but secure software is incredibly important.
I will admit, lots of first passes at productizing AI itself has just been crappy chatbots strapped to applications.
My favorite personal use case so far has been homelab automation. Testing and configuring new services is incredibly easy now. I'm also using it to automate basically all the grunt work of maintenance. For any personal software you'd like, you can just ask your bot now to make it.
This is my expectation. “We are overspending on AI and we’re going to destroy the company and maybe the economy” is less sensational than the end of the world, but it seems much more realistic.
can't weigh in on that; i don't think any of this stuff makes sense as astroturf. but if a news story exists, it certainly could have been planted by the company being described as having terrifyingly powerful unreleased tech.
On Friday, a Google executive responded to the internal discussion about the non-disparagement clause and said that the company would not enforce it for workers who had left the company.
“We’ve always encouraged an open dialogue about safety and responsibility,” a Google spokesperson said in an email Tuesday. “Recently, we’ve updated our terms for new hires, which included removing the post-termination aspect of non-disparagement clauses.”
The company does not enforce non-disparagement clauses after people leave Google, and it has dedicated, internal channels for workers to escalate concerns to top leaders, the spokesperson said.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 27.3 ms ] threadUsual noise from a very very small but very very vocal minority of trouble makers who are trying to force their own views on everyone else and run to the press to try and feel important and try to make a mountain out of a 3 or 4 person molehill.
I've not heard anyone at all talking about this in the office. Perhaps everyone is thinking it or talking about it privately, but I've not heard any of it period.
They're getting ignored by management because they're the usual agitators and over-opinionated who everyone hates dealing with. It's not surprising these people end up getting fired or let go, because no one likes working with them and so they don't get on good projects and don't get good feedback in reviews etc because they piss everyone else off. Then of course when they are fired (or jump before they are pushed) they run right back to the press about how they were sacked for reason X when really it's because they're a fucking jerk.
If this sounds like you: http://go/no-jerks is old has never been more applicable. Don't be a jerk.
Very close in feel to what the DoD used to be in the early 2010s
You don’t hear from people because they are afraid of consequences given their contracts.
Some people value truth over that. Annoying,eh?
What part of the post was ultra-nationalistic?
All very useful framing to discredit the actitivists without actually addressing the issues.
It's a way to distract and defuse the situation by ad hominem attacks, typical strategy for suppressing workers' rights or anything that inconveniences the status quo.
I have no direct experience of this, but it sounds like from the OP's comments that OP doesn't like the behaviour of these people - i.e. leaking things to the press, stirring up trouble, trying to assert their views regardless of others etc are personal behaviours which are 100% valid things to be criticised for. I don't think OP is attacking the ideas.
"I got sacked because of my views/because I spoke up/because my employer is racist" Vs "I got myself sacked because I was an asshat".
Of course, who do you believe?
I think in life, I've found that on the whole (but not always) the more crazy and hysterical someone sounds, the less likely I am to believe them.
"I never had a female friend confide in me about abuse she experienced but them bitches are all overreacting anyway." That's about the size of it.
If they want to do that free of consequences, tough luck.
I think there was some example of DeepMind models doing it, but under the control of a third party pen tester and the models stopped themselves.
Everyone hates on Google but they seem fairly competent at infra stuff. I don't think we've heard of any google-controlled (not third party using a Google model) felonies like we have from OpenAI and Anthropic?
Perhaps this is why we have not heard though!
The article is just about them asking for changing the wording of contracts, not some super secret stuff they're dying to say and really can't.
Without the paywall: https://archive.is/fKI3D
1. Full disclosure. 2. Run for your life. 3. Live in exile.
I will admit, lots of first passes at productizing AI itself has just been crappy chatbots strapped to applications.
My favorite personal use case so far has been homelab automation. Testing and configuring new services is incredibly easy now. I'm also using it to automate basically all the grunt work of maintenance. For any personal software you'd like, you can just ask your bot now to make it.
I mean they tell you the reason in the first paragraph? Or is reading tfa too much?
2. sideload Signal
3. find a verified reporter on Bluesky, etc. with public Signal contact info
4. destroy phone thoroughly afterwards, not just screen but chips