Well sure, they censor/manipulate their users, why wouldn’t they do the same to their employees?
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/8/16106728/google-fire...
I thought you meant that he went on record saying something like "I'm perpetuating gender stereotypes".
Instead, it looks like he's just confirmed that Google thought he was perpetuating gender stereotypes, and that's what he was fired for, which is no surprise.
There are whistleblower exceptions, but generally, if you can't be trusted to keep secrets, you're not a professional.
If supplying search history to a government known to imprison or torture dissidents is an immoral activity, then bringing it to light is whistleblowing. You can make a cogent argument that it's morally fine to do that, but you can't simultaneously say that facilitating spying is immoral and that it's unprofessional/immoral to reveal plans to that effect.
Predicting the future is tricky, particularly when it involves the decisions of complicated political processes where the decision-makers (most likely) disagree. Plans often change. We can't possibly know what they're going to do. Maybe nothing; plenty of large corporate projects never launch.
I certainly hope that Google doesn't follow the same path! But US tech companies have been complicit in human rights abuses in the past, so the public has every reason to remain vigilant.
The product hasn't launched yet, might not ever launch, and we don't know how the product will work if it did launch. I'd hope they're thinking about how to make sure nobody gets in trouble, but we currently don't know what precautions they came up with.
There are lots of companies working in China. We know of one incident involving Yahoo. Do we assume without evidence that any other companies working there have caused dissidents to be tortured?
Leadership was actively advancing the project and promoting obscurity / secrecy. Sundar did not act to mitigate risks of harm to free information and dissidents. People were not given enough clarity to make good moral decisions.
The entire project reeks of a top-down ethics violation. You can't with a straight face introduce AI ethics guidelines, while you have backdoor meetings with need-to-know engineers building a surveillance and information manipulation system.
An objective party within Google should work hard to protect Google's values. To me, an outsider, Sundar can't be trusted anymore on responsible ethical AI (and by extension: AI itself). Probably some misaligned incentives there.
> As a leader in AI, we feel a deep responsibility to get this right.
So get it right. Start by fixing the wrongs and keeping consistency with your messaging.
Or tell me how the planning of a opaquely censored, dragnetted, privacy-intruding, and authoritarian-friendly search platform is consistent with:
1. Be socially beneficial.
2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.
3. Be built and tested for safety.
4. Be accountable to people.
5. Incorporate privacy design principles.
7. Be made available for uses that accord with these principles.
We will work to limit potentially harmful or abusive applications.
We will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:
Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.
Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.
Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.
Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.
The only thing consistent with the AI ethics guidelines (a plan going forward, already abandoned on release) is the pledge to technical excellence. I am sure, as the leader in Search, that Google is able to build a fine custom solution for the Chinese government.
Why do they have that plan? Because there is absolutely zero chance china would allow them to operate without it.