Tech Brew Ride Home - Friday, June 8, 2018 - Google's 7 Principles for AI

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

Google’s lays out ethical principles for AI development, Facebook has another privacy issue (again), why the next generation of gaming consoles might be the last, Yahoo Messenger logs off, and the weekend long-reads suggestions. Stories from: @sundarpichai, @terrortola  Links:AI at Google: our principles (Google)Can Google keep its promises on building ethical AI? (Engadget)Airbnb says forced to cancel bookings under new Japan law (Asia One)Ubisoft Believes Next Gen Is the Last for Consoles as Microsoft Looks Beyond Platforms (Variety)Chat Wars (N+1) Longreads:‘I can understand about 50 percent of the things you say’: How Congress is struggling to get smart on tech (Washington Post)The Twitter crime mystery that gripped Spain (BBC)Meet the people who still use Myspace: 'It's given me so much joy' (The Guardian)Exploring The Digital Ruins Of 'Second Life' (Digg)Why Aren’t We All Buying Houses on the Internet? (Slate) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Friday, June 8th, 2018. Today, Google lays out ethical principles for AI development. Facebook has another privacy issue again.

Why the next generation of gaming consoles might be the last. Yahoo Messenger logs off. And as always, the weekend long-reads suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. This sort of got lost last week because the news kind of broke over the the weekend. But do you remember that Project Maven AI program that Google had with the Pentagon that used artificial intelligence systems developed by Google to analyze video from drone footage? It was hugely controversial inside of Google. Several people resigned in protest, and 4,000 people

inside Google signed a petition asking management to terminate the deal, which was worth as much as $250 million a year. And last weekend, word came out that the internal pressure worked. Google management said they would not renew the contract after its completion next year. And today, Google has released what amounts to its own version of Asimov's three laws of robotics. In a blog post, Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai released seven principles for AI use and said that in accordance with these principles, the company will refuse to use AI in cases that cause, quote, overall harm, like weapons or surveillance. Here are, what Pachai is calling Google's objectives for AI applications.

Number one, be socially beneficial. Number two, avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias. Number three, be built and tested for safety. Number four, be accountable to people. Number five, incorporate privacy design principles. Number six, uphold high standards of scientific excellence. And number seven, be made available for uses that accord with these principles. In his blog post, Pichai wrote,

We recognize that such powerful technology raises equally powerful questions about its use. How AI is developed and used will have a significant impact on society for many years to come. As a leader in AI, we feel a deep responsibility to get this right. So today we're announcing seven principles to guide our work going forward. These are not theoretical concepts. They are concrete standards that will actively govern our research and product. development and will impact our business decisions, end quote. Pichai further wrote that Google will not pursue AI applications in the following four areas.

Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Weapons whose purpose is to cause or facilitate injury to people. Technologies that gather information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms. And technologies whose purpose contravenes human rights. quote, we want to be clear that while we are not developing AI for use and weapons, we will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas. These include cybersecurity, training, military recruitment, veterans' health care, and search and rescue. These collaborations are important and will actively look for more ways to augment the critical work of these organizations

and keep service members and civilians safe, end quote. So it's not quite as pithy as don't be. evil, but it is what a lot of people have been asking for. At the very minimum, a set of guiding principles that shows that a company at the forefront of AI research, like Google is, is at least putting some thought into what they're developing and not just doing stuff because it can be done. At Engadgett, Andrew Tarantola asks if Google can keep its promises to bring ethics to AI. He says he certainly hopes so, quote, overall, sure, these are some. great sounding axioms to live by.

But what Pachai doesn't expound upon is whether any form of enforcement mechanism will exist or what sorts of penalties the company will incur, should it violate these guidelines? Because no amount of mea culpa's apology tours or senatorial oversight committee appearances are going to suffice when ascension AI slips its bounds and crushes humanity under the boot of a robot uprising. Full credit to Casey Newton, who in his nightly newsletter about social media, headline this next story as Facebook sets the days without a scandal counter back to zero. So, apparently, there was a bug in Facebook's code

that from May 18th through May 27th exposed the posts of 14 million users. By exposed, I mean those users thought they were posting privately to Facebook, just to friends or whatever, but the bug set those posts to public, so anyone could have seen them. Here's how Facebook explained how this. snafu came to pass. Quote, the error occurred while we were building a new way to share featured items on your profile like a photo. Since these featured items are public, we

inadvertently made the suggested audience for all new posts, not just these items, public, end quote. If you were one of the 14 million accounts exposed, Facebook will be notifying you. So I don't know what you can say about this really, other than somewhere at Facebook, someone has got to be banging their head against the wall at this point. Or maybe that's just all of us Facebook users. On the one hand, this is Facebook being transparent and saying sorry when they screw up. But also, will they ever not screw up? I feel like I read this sort of story, what, two or three times a week?

Actually, in his newsletter, I think Casey made an interesting point. Quote, I predict that if anyone is fired over exposing 14 million to potential shame and ridicule, we'll hear nothing about it. I think that's the wrong move. If the perception holds that no one at Facebook ever faces any consequences for their mistakes, trust in the company will further decline, and doing good in the world will get that much harder. Airbnb has been forced to cancel thousands of reservations in Japan

ahead of a new home-sharing law in that country that goes into effect June 15th. Airbnb said in a statement that it was going to create a $10 million fund to help compensate travelers whose plans might have been affected by the cancellations. Apparently, the new Japanese law requires people who list Airbnb rentals to get registration paperwork from the government. So this is not a case of Airbnb being kicked out of Japan. The canceled reservations are only for Japanese hosts who had not gotten the paperwork filed in time. Aside from hosts registering and meeting various regulatory standards, the new law attempts to limit some Airbnb inventory seasonally.

For example, an article in Asia One described how for the tourist hotspot of Kyoto, rentals in residential areas will be restricted to the slow tourist season months of mid-January to mid-March. Quote, this stinks, and that's an understatement, Airbnb said. This is understandably frustrating, especially since many hosts are close to acquiring their license. Going forward, unless the government reverses its position, we will automatically cancel and fully refund any reservations at listings in Japan, that have not been licensed within 10 days of guest arrival. A couple of quick stories here, some odds and ends.

Ant Financial Services Group, the operator of China's largest payment platform, raised around $14 billion in what people are saying is the biggest ever single fundraising round globally by a private company. Ant Financial was spun off from Alibaba Group Holdings, and Ant operates AliPay, the world's largest mobile and online payments platform, as well as UBow, the world's largest money market fund. The valuation of this fundraising round was not disclosed,

but Ant was previously valued at around $150 billion. And Variety has an interview up with Ubisoft CEO, Eves Gimo. If I'm going to get a pronunciation wrong on today's show, it's going to be because I got either Ubisoft wrong or I got Eves Gimo wrong. you'll let me know. Anyway, in the interview, Gimo says that this next generation of gaming consoles will probably be the last generation of gaming consoles. Many in the video game industry believe that the industry as a whole is moving beyond dedicated consoles and dedicated hardware, period, as streaming games and the ability to play any game on any device takes over. Gimo agrees,

quote, I think we will see another generation, but there is a good chance that step by step we will see less and less hardware. With time, I think streaming will become more accessible to many players and make it not necessary to have big hardware at home. There will be one more console generation, and then after that, we will be streaming, all of us, end quote. Nintendo, of course, has already had quite a bit of success with the Switch, which allows gamers to take console style and console quality games on the go, and Microsoft recently told variety that it too was looking to move its gaming strategy beyond hardware dependency in the coming years. All right, Long Reeds time, everybody. For about 20 years now, people have been bemoaning

the fact that lawmakers, and especially those in Congress, seem to be so clueless about technology, even as technology has gone from a fringe industry to one that is absolutely central to our global economy. I was among those who ridiculed the performance of some of Mark Zuckerberg's interrogators when he went before Congress. It was clear that maybe half of them had never actually used Facebook themselves, and frankly, just getting a millennial in your office to give you a crash course. It doesn't really cut it if you're going to be making law. Actually, the most impressive thing was several years ago

when John McCain actually had the wherewithal to ask Tim Cook why he couldn't get automatic app updates on his iPhone. That demonstrated a higher level of technical now than, frankly, most people on Capitol Hill. But this is actually a really serious thing. me give you a quote quote look at what our future entails we're going to need to figure out autonomous cars 5G wireless gene editing the internet of things end quote that is democratic FCC commissioner jessica rosenworsal in an interview with the wall street journal that is my first long read

suggestion the piece looks at efforts to revive congress's office of technology assessment which lawmakers let lapse amid partisan squabbles in the 1990s quote after the hearing i think law lawmakers are even more cognizant that Congress really should have its own advisors, end quote, said Democratic representative Mark Takano of California, one of the lawmakers pushing to revive the Hill's tech policy shop. The BBC has a fascinating piece up about the Twitter crime mystery that had gripped Spain. A Twitter user went on a tweet storm recently, claiming to unpack a murder mystery based on a single photograph that he also tweeted. police in Spain responded Social media across the Spanish speaking world picked up the details and started to dissect everything

serial style quoting from the piece it was an extraordinary story except none of it was true I won't spoil it read the story for the details two pieces about corners of the internet where the tumble weeds grow

first the Guardian has a piece up about talking to people who are still rabid users of MySpace Quoting, 25-year-old Bronx resident Ray Maldonado, who describes himself as the fresh soul survivor of MySpace, also remains loyal to the platform he joined in May 2007 to keep in touch with school friends. Every criticism directed towards MySpace is technically also directed towards me,

being that I am still as active on the website now as I was 11 years ago, he said. But there are also times where the phrase, MySpace is dead, motivates me to prove these people wrong, end quote. Dig went in another direction, taking a tour through what it calls the digital ruins of Second Life, that 3D massively multiplayer open-world game run by Lyndon Labs, which had its own moment in the mid-aughts. Shout out to Hunter Walk, if you're listening. And it sounds almost like visiting Second Life these days

is almost a Westworld-style chance to roam through a period in pop culture from more than a decade ago that is stuck in amber. Quote, I decided to find the old John Edwards' second life headquarters. It was created in 2007 to promote the former senator's presidential campaign. This was long before he lost the primary, and it was revealed that he had had an ongoing affair while his wife was dying. The headquarters was located in the Laguna Beach area, a section built by MTV after their first attempt to create Myspace 2.0 largely failed. In February of 2007, it received mainstream media attention after it was vandalized.

A user going by the name Karina was finally willing to help out. The whole Laguna Beach area had been deleted, she explained. The John Edwards campaign headquarters was long gone, end quote. According to the piece, there are still 800,000 active users of Second Life. So if you want to do a crudely 3D version of Westworld-style voyeuristic tourism, I've booked your Sunday afternoon for you. You're welcome. Finally, from the genre of you would have thought technology,

would have disrupted this very particular and very obvious part of the economy, but it has not, at least not yet. And why not exactly? In Slate, Henry Grabbar asked the question, why aren't we all buying houses on the internet? Why are there still real estate agents? Quoting from the piece, nearly nine in ten Americans use an agent to buy and sell their homes. Last year, residential commission revenue was somewhere in the range of 75 billion, and the market remains fragmented with even the biggest brokerages managing just a tiny fraction of transactions, at least for now. Wall Street and Silicon Valley are infatuated with the idea, there isn't an industry in the world they can't blow to shreds with money and technology,

says Steve Murray, the president of real estate analysis firm Real Trends, end quote. Well, the conclusion, Grubar comes to, quote, why hasn't the internet cut out the agent, even as houses sell to internet companies with the click of a button? In part, because consumers aren't really trying to inject any startup pizzazz into the largest and most complex transaction of their lives. Local knowledge remains invaluable. That, and it's hard to develop regular clients. This isn't seamless. In real estate, a satisfied customer isn't coming back anytime soon, end quote.

This piece has some fascinating analysis of the billions of dollars of VC money that has flooded into real estate, especially in the last few years. So it's worth wondering if things might actually be. be about to change. Finally today, another end of an era headline. Yahoo! Has announced it will shut down Yahoo Messenger on July 17th. Announcing the news, the company wrote, there currently isn't a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger. We're constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel, currently in beta, end quote. Of course, chances are this news won't affect you, as it's unlikely you or anyone you know is still using Yahoo Messenger.

And in this era of WhatsApp, Snapchat at all, if you weren't there, it's helpful to see the messenger platforms of today as analogy services to the likes of AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo Messenger debuted as Yahoo Pager back in 1998, though Pager was a fake analogy itself because most people only ever use these messenger services on desktop computers. It was actually a huge thing getting your friends on one platform or another

because each of these services used to make their messages inoperable with other platforms. As a bit of a de facto long read, I'm going to include a link to an essay about the cat and mouse, almost spy versus spy games that the various messaging platforms engaged in during the 90s. And like AIM, Yahoo! Messages made a reasonably successful transition to mobile. The Yahoo Messenger app is still ranked in the top 200 of App Download. But clearly the messaging game has moved on, and it's worth noting that WhatsApp itself was created by former Yahoo employees. Hey, I haven't asked you guys for ratings and reviews in a hot minute. We're sitting at around 150 reviews and iTunes slash Apple Podcasts.

Last time I asked you for ratings and reviews, you quickly popped us up over 100. So maybe in between your second life sessions this weekend, shoot us a quick five stars and a nice written review on Apple Podcasts. Enjoy your weekend, everyone. I've been your host, Brian McCullough.