Ignoring future Google research in ethics has low-risks, as top ethics talent will certainly avoid working for Google, and prefer academic freedom elsewhere (where reviewers are external, to avoid CoI).
> as top ethics talent will certainly avoid working for Google, and prefer academic freedom elsewhere
I wouldn't be that sure. I know the "headline narrative" is invested in painting Google as evil (and they don't tend to be that wrong in many instances), but the actual sentiment among the general talent pool is very divided in this instance. There is a sizeable percentage who are relieved to see activist pressure being resisted in a corporation and would be inclined to make a pick on that basis. We all know corporate pressure is not the only threat to academic/intellectual freedom.
posts from health professionals can be even worse. this one was not too bad at explaining the thinking of ruling elites (who think they can fine-tune an epidemic)
Not too bad? This is a post from a guy who, from his Twitter, "has been thinking for the last few days" and somehow he knows the thinking of ruling elites?
Honestly, I am really surprised that this post is being upvoted at all. Empty speculation for no reason at all.
It's also very wrong, as it depends on what measures are required for each curve, and as it seems clear, this guy does not seem to know the possible measures at hand, their feasibility and effectiveness.
"this one was not too bad at explaining the thinking of ruling elites"
By inventing a completely unsupported rationalization/conspiracy theory?
"Ruling elites" are not omnipotent, and paradoxically most are in the most vulnerable demographic. And as others said, it is a situation where one can be damned regardless of which way they act.
In the case of strong containment/quarantines, unless you're willing to completely close the borders indefinitely at this point it is futile doing maximum containment: it's past the point where you can stop it, as the world managed to do with SARS and MERS.
At this point every government is vulnerable to every other government, and further vulnerable to the possibility that there are super-carriers spreading it. And FWIW, a number of countries have a done a very good job of managing it, but again it isn't a closed-loop.
French President Macron seems to be doing what this post is writing: trying to fine-tune the spread, and find a balance between economy and health, with proportional measures
PR is what all science is about. Without communicating ideas, science is not useful. The trio above managed to communicate deep learning ideas to the wider vision and NLP community such as by collaborating with them to come up with benchmarks which would prove usefulness of deep learning, but also to industry and general public. Schmidhuber did very little on these fronts, and even his technical contributions while laudable do not compare with the awardee's.
