When they removed their “don’t be evil” motto, I thought it was hilariously bad optics but probably came from some misguided thinking that if they stopped talking about the potential for evil, people would stop wondering whether they had bad motives and needed the motto to keep straight.
It became clearer and clearer that they removed the motto because they felt it was holding them back from greater profits and was skewing employee behaviours in ways they didn’t want and bringing up objections to policy ideas that they wanted to avoid. It was never about the optics, it was about the profits.
Now, when Google removes a pledge not to make portable killer AIs and skynet, you have to accept that it’s because they see making portable killer AIs and skynet as hugely profitable for them, and they don’t want any good intentions or moral behaviour getting in the way of that profit.
We pledge this until we change our mind
Every large corporation ever
Every corporate pledge ends with “unless we can monetise it”.
Corporations are people, my friend.
Sociopathic people.
OP please edit your post to put the link in correctly https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/04/google-removes-pledge-to-not-use-ai-for-weapons-from-website/
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
- Groucho Marx
The canary has died.
The canary died back when they removed “don’t be evil”. I think the canary was just resurrected as a Horizon Zero Dawn mech canary.
This clearly means the AI will be used for fire solutions and guidance, right?
Not threat detection and target identification, right?
annakin_padme_meme.jpeg
Maybe they should change their name to “Pacific Bell” something fitting like that. Or AT&T. Or Maybe something a little more adjusted to their near future… “Blockbuster”
I remember when the motto was do no evil, now it is we promise not to make killer robots.
Not any more, they don’t!
How about domestic then, we promise not to make domestic killer robots for urban pacification, read control. Unless the domestic population requires it of course. Or we deem it necessary ourselves, or we feel like it. Your compliance with this message is assumed by the act of reading it.
The Google Graveyard will be littered with the bodies of people now. Fuck them, move to something better for the world.
Well yeah, gotta be open to those sweet
defenseoffense contracts. All those brown people on the other side of the world ain’t gunna kill themselves!For some reason I’m just seeing a headline with no hyperlink. Here’s the link if anyone else has the same issue
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/04/google-removes-pledge-to-not-use-ai-for-weapons-from-website/
Yea, it’s just the title and no link. To the top with you for the source!
didn’t they remove “do no evil” a long time ago, too?
No.
Um, yes?
Following Google’s corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took “Do the right thing” as its motto, also forming the opening of its corporate code of conduct. The original motto was retained in Google’s code of conduct, now a subsidiary of Alphabet. Between April 21st and May 4th of 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct’s preface and retained in its last sentence.
Between 21 April and 4 May 2018, Google removed the motto from the preface, leaving a mention in the final line: “And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!”
They kept it within their internal code of conduct, but it’s been quite a while since that was their public motto.
To be fair, breadsmasher didn’t ask if it’s the public motto, they asked if they removed it. And they didn’t remove it, as it’s still in the public code of conduct.
So… they didn’t remove it, they moved it.
But that’s really neither here nor there, as it’s just words. I’ve never known a company to care much about words over profit.
Of course they would
Don’t be evilDon’tbe evil.Don’t beevil.
