Glad I abandoned Google 7 years ago when they made it obvious what they were really all about. I do miss my customized Android phones but it'll be a frozen day in hell before I give them another cent.
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
290 points (99.3% liked)
Technology
61774 readers
6120 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.
IBM, in 1979.
This is wide open to send a nuke on allies and blame the AI.
send a nuke
Hey I've seen that movie.
Well, Gemini 2.0 is bad. Flash seems to have regressed to be worse than my local 32Bs, and pro fails some prompts 1.5 gets.
Maybe they are trying to compensate?
~~Don't be evil~~
~~Do the right thing~~
~~Do no harm~~
Line must go up
Make everyone but "us" poor, so they can't afford to resist. Just start with marginalized populations (bc that is who america truly is deep down).
Divide and conquer
Do harm others before others harm you
Do all the harm
Don't be evil (to the shareholders)
Do the right thing (for our stock value)
Do no harm (to our profit margins)
...
Line must go up (before it comes down) ((wishful thinking))
"Well, you have to let us do a little harm." ¯_(ツ)_/¯
do a little arm
Oh god, they already blew off your arm!
Worth noting that when Google was founded, Microsoft was in the middle of a long antitrust investigation, which was documenting every illegal thing they had done to maintain their monopoly and hurt every company that challenged it.
The "evil" in the Don't Be Evil motto was widely seen as a reference to that company and that behaviour. From early on, Google saw Microsoft as a threat. They ran Linux servers, and tried to make sure as few employees as possible were running Microsoft on their desktops and laptops. A lot of internal tools were developed to try to avoid any kind of dependency on Microsoft, including ones that eventually became available externally like Google Docs etc.
Now, 25ish years later, it's Google who are being investigated for leveraging their monopoly in a way that hurts consumers. IMO, they still never stooped as low as Microsoft did. Google paid Apple and Mozilla billions to be the default search engine. Microsoft used lawsuits and patents to try to drive their competition out of business. But, it's still a monopoly that harms the world.
Anyhow, I'm glad that Google originally had the "Don't be evil" motto, and also had this bit about AI principles that avoid the risk of harm. They act like useful warrant canaries because when they're removed you know something's up.
Doing evil and harm is one of their strengths.
I mean of course they did. A public company can not be trusted to leave money on the table. The only thing that might slow them down is the bad press that might erode good will. In this climate though they were always going to strap Gemini to a machine gun.
Not only can they not be trusted to leave money on the table, but they can actively be trusted not to.
Do no harm (to quarterly earnings)
Same reason suckerberg went full elon. It's the gold rush of corporate greed with a conman at the helm
could Goog-l possibly change their motto to ‘Do no smarm’ then?