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“Our ML system has detected wrong think. Did you know you are being racist? Bad serf!”



I generally refer to this as the 'We reject being civilized' argument :-).

Civilization in this context being the set of rules and norms that impose restrictions on our behavior in exchange for a improvements in the quality of life for everyone in the community. One of the challenges of parenting is trying to explain to your children "why" they should follow the rules in terms they can understand and relate to.


I don't think any company should take on the role of parenting (presumably) grown ups, or worse yet children. I don't appreciate the idea that because an individual parent might teach their children morals and the social contract (nevermind the freedom individual parents have to raise their children according to their own subtle ethical codes) that it would be appropriate for large internet services to do the same for their users with machine learning.

It should remain with the people to argue with each other and change their views, not with black box magic woven into the communication medium.


Business are groups of people. They may collectively feel they can work together to advance society in a positive direction; not every business wants to be amoral and purely capitalist. As long as they’re not breaking the law, that seems to me to be a good thing.




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