"But it happened." - Casey Muratori's comment on Eric Schmidt's commencement speech
138 points by mrunix
138 points by mrunix
Transcript here for those who would rather read.
I read the transcript instead of watching the video. I can understand why people make videos, but I wish they would also take the time to publish it as text. It wouldn't take long to copy the transcript and edit it to be readable as prose.
From the article:
And somehow all of a sudden the tone becomes completely passive. He doesn't say, "We built this stuff and then it turned out to do these really bad things. That was our fault." Or,"What a horrible mistake we made." Or, "Here's how we failed." Right? It's just completely passive. He says all these bad things. We didn't set out to do it,but it happened. Completely passive. It happened. That's it.
From Joseph Weizenbaum, 50 years ago this year:
Today even the most highly placed managers represent themselves as innocent victims of a technology for which they accept no responsibility and which they do not even pretend to understand. (One must wonder, though, why it never occurred to Admiral Moorer to ask what effect the millions of tons of bombs the computer said were being dropped on Viet Nam were having.) The American Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, while explaining that he could hardly have known of the “White House horrors” revealed by the Watergate investigation, mourned over “the awfulness of events and the tragedy that has befallen so many people.”:
“The tragedy so described had action, but no actors. Only ‘events‘ were ‘awful‘---not individuals or officials. In this lifeless setting, the mockery of law and the deceit of the people had not been rehearsed and practiced: they had simply ‘befallen.‘“
The myth of technological and political and social inevitability is a powerful tranquilizer of the conscience. Its service is to remove responsibility from the shoulders of everyone who truly believes in it.
But, in fact, there are actors!
For example, a planning paper circulated to the faculty and staff by the director of a major computer laboratory of a major university speaks as follows:
“Most of our research has been supported, and probably will continue to be supported, by the Government of the United States, the Department of Defense in particular. The Department of Defense, as well as other agencies of our government, is engaged in the development and operation of complex systems that have a very great destructive potential and that, increasingly, are commanded and controlled through digital computers. These systems are responsible, in large part, for the maintenance of what peace and stability there is in the world, and at the same time they are capable of unleashing destruction of a scale that is almost impossible for man to comprehend.”
Note that systems are responsible, not people. [...] There is not the slightest hint of a question as to whether we want this future. It is simply coming. We are helpless in the face of a tide that will, for no reason at all, not be stemmed. There is no turning back. Even the question is not worth discussing.
Weizenbaum, "Computer Power And Human Reason", 1976
why it never occurred to Admiral Moorer to ask what effect the millions of tons of bombs the computer said were being dropped on Viet Nam were having
As far as this goes, they knew in many forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_war_games
This part had always stuck with me, I don't know if it's more or less relevant now but feels more to me:
The "inability to act" which, as Forrester points out, "provided the incentive" to augment or replace the low-internal-speed human organizations with computers, might in some other historical situation have been an incentive for modifying the task to be accomplished, perhaps doing away with it altogether, or for restructuring the human organizations whose inherent limitations were, after all, seen as the root of the trouble. [...]
Yes, the computer did arrive "just in time." But in time for what? In time to save--and save very nearly intact, indeed, to entrench and stabilize--social and political structures that might have been either radically renovated or allowed to totter under the demands that were sure to be made on them.
Orwell wrote about this too (see the paragraph starting with "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.")
This was worth a watch. Casey's a bright guy to start with, but this is a more serious topic than the tech stuff he's usually on about.
Agreed. I wasn't sure what to expect, but he makes some strong points.
The thing to me is that Schmidt exhorts the students to "bring humanity into the room where decisions [about technology] are made." (paraphrase) I mean yeah well ok maybe that sounds good. But the way things are going it seems like other people are making decisions about technology (AI) that impacts the rest of us, and that the rest of us aren't in the room at all.
If Eric were certain you were creating "unambiguous good", and "things happened", then maybe trusting his judgement isn't a good move.
Casey didn't give himself enough credit. This was very well done, and lines up with my reaction to the highlights I've seen from the speech.
Also, It tickles me that he referenced I Think You Should Leave. There's so much "We're all trying to find the guy who did this" here.
Yeah the whole "we just wanted to make a better world but somehow all those bad things happened" schtick is really telling. Eric Schmidt is obviously being hypocritical in the literal sense of the word. Like many others who by their action have caused harm, he's rationalizing his actions.
Another theme I think is important is the generational issue. People of Schmidt's generation hold disproportionate political and economic power. Today's young people are not stupid, they see what's going on. Their lives are controlled by a bunch of old people who are telling them they are going to have to deal with job insecurity, economic hardships, dystopian technology and an environmental crisis, and that those things "just happened", while everybody knows those people are the ones who brought this about. No wonder those students are booing. I would too.
Chilling, but captures my concern well. I am one of the children of this era of the internet, and this helped put a name to it.
TL:DR:
One of the most powerful people of our times who built something he thinks is bad: "Oh no, why is this thing I built so bad for us, I didn't want that. Anyway let me go back to making more money with something that I promise won't be bad this time."
This is a nice watch, but I truly think it falls short by the number of times it asks "why?". If you watch this and blame Eric Schmidt, you'll never get anywhere. Eric Schmidt sat at that chair because he did exactly what an Eric Schmidt would do. And Google won the race because he had an Eric Schmidt sitting there. Except for true anomalies like the case of Valve entrenching itself so deep in a market that a single man's vision shapes an industry (for better or worse), Googles, Metas, Apples and OpenAIs are the inevitable outcomes of the political and economic dynamics.
I don't know if the point was to blame Eric Schmidt, as much as to have a conversation about the incentive structures and corporate culture that turned "Don't be evil" into "Let's spy on our users and show them ads everywhere they go". If anyone can explain what happened, it should be the heads of Google, right? And I think the video makes a good point, that if they couldn't stop it from happening then, what makes them optimistic that we can stop it with AI, which is led by people who are actually less morally compelled than they were. (think Sam Altman vs Larry Page)
Right. Since US is an authoritarian hellhole and has been for a century, it just inevitably produces these kinds of outcomes.
And it is not an authoritarian hellhole because people chose to, right? Originally it wanted to help the huddled masses, to give them freedom. But on the way there, the authoritarianism just happened.
The problem is that the people of US never own their fuckups in general. They are always the poor victims of the circumstances.
If my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike.
You're saying the problem is that people should be different.
Well, they aren't. So what's your point then?
People being different starts with individuals deciding to be different. And if it doesn't work out, at least someone cared enough to try for once.
I like this one:
One would have thought there were no schools in the US, were we not informed every week that some kids were shot dead in one.
Schmidt said,
The same tools that connect us also isolate us. The same platforms that gave everyone a voice like you're using now also degraded the public square. They rewarded outrage. They amplified our worst instincts. They coarssened the way we speak to each other.".
And Muratori said,
But Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google and in other executive roles there from like 2001 to like 2017, the very period when like the dark patterns of internet business were developed and entrenched in how the industry worked. led by his company like Google the place that made advertising and data collection and manipulating what people did and all this sort of AB testing everything that whole thing was like their science that's what they were building literally that thing for him to come out and and like cosplay as Steve Waznjak right basically he's he's sort of like Tim Robinson in the hot dog outfit looking around going, I'm still trying to find the guy who did this, right? To have him say that, it just it doesn't make any sense.
(I'm quoting from the transcript at https://gist.github.com/wrs/648401d9bdd33c0a15f6afbfef156874 )
But I don't think that what Google did with advertising, data collection, and AB testing were what led to isolation, degradation of the public square, outrage, and coarsening of speech. Rather, I think the primary causes were (a) allowing any individual to post something that everyone can see (in contrast to the pre-web age, when in order to reach a lot of people you had to be invited by the mainstream media, which had the effect of filtering out points of view and ways of speaking that were considered incorrect, mean, or rude by the establishment), and (b) allowing individuals to choose which content they would consume from a very large menu (which leads to echo chambers, because most people don't prioritize spending time listening to people whom they consider stupid, unethical, and incorrect -- but that's what people with opposing views appear like to each other).
If I'm right, then what Schmidt did wrong (if it was wrong) wasn't advertising, data collection, and AB testing, but rather building technology to allow individuals to freely and openly communicate with a large audience.
I don't think you're correct at all.
The problem is in the selective amplification and distribution of voices with the singular goal of profitability for the distributing corporation.
The engagement metric is the enemy of civilization.
But I don't think that what Google did with advertising, data collection, and AB testing were what led to isolation, degradation of the public square, outrage, and coarsening of speech. Rather, I think the primary causes were (a) allowing any individual to post something that everyone can see (in contrast to the pre-web age, when in order to reach a lot of people you had to be invited by the mainstream media, which had the effect of filtering out points of view and ways of speaking that were considered incorrect, mean, or rude by the establishment), and (b) allowing individuals to choose which content they would consume from a very large menu (which leads to echo chambers, because most people don't prioritize spending time listening to people whom they consider stupid, unethical, and incorrect -- but that's what people with opposing views appear like to each other).
I think it's both; the data collection, etc. but I have been lately reflecting that microblogging is evil even without algorithms driving engagement.
I see the dynamics that Mastodon has (and I'm intentionally saying Mastodon, as I think other ActivityPub uses are different), and even without algorithmic engagement, many of the dark effects of Twitter recur.
I can't put my finger in it. Maybe Mastodon is only contaminated by Twitter inertia and Mastodon would have been "good" if Twitter had not existed. But I feel there's something evil in microblogging and unbounded federation that makes amplifying small texts so frictionless.
This feels wrong because it feels like gatekeeping. I also don't like reducing things to "number of retweets go up" is the root of all evil, although it might be correct.
They created a technology which maybe at some point surprised them in terms of the negatives, and rather than working to fixing them, they realised they could capitalise on all of this to drive engagement and make more money on their ads.
I'd go so far as to say that we have no idea if the technology is intrinsically this bad, because we've only really seen what this technology becomes if you optimise for and try to make money off of the bad parts.
The audacity of the elite should not surprise anybody and jet it is surprising why he even bother to tell us stories form his alternative timeline? But i am grateful for the reality check.
Let’s not forget that Eric being a ghoul wouldn’t be enough to create modern day FAANGs. There have been thousands of people who worked there in the last 15 years, and helped create surveillance economy. What’s maybe more surprising is that quite a few of them describe themselves as “ex-google” (on various social networks) as if that was something to be proud of.
So now that Eric and all of his friends have all of the money, shouldn't they pay to fix the mess they made? Or is this an Upton Sinclair "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it" kind of situation?