[yalue]

You're right about all of that, but shouldn't a meaningful board at least make some show of trying to include diverse opinions? The key word of course is "meaningful", and I think you're right on the money that Google wasn't interested in having a panel to discuss meaningful issues in the first place; it seems more likely that they wanted to be able to point to a source of "external" "unbiased" opinions to justify what they were planning to do already.

(Obviously the people who complained about a prominent right-wing figure would just argue something hypocritical like "only the right kind of diversity of opinion", but that's beside the point; the panel was a dumb idea to begin with, coming from a group with so much of a stake in trying to advance AI for the sake of advertising)

[durability]

Diversity is great! Putting someone who advocates for not using AI on an AI ethics board is diversity. Putting someone who advocates for more/less/self regulation is diversity.

Putting someone hostile towards the LGBTQ community and LGBTQ rights? That’s not diversity. That has no place in 2019.

[yalue]

Sure, but if they're not debating that topic, why should it be an issue? Not that I think such a person belongs on the panel, but the reason they're not invited should be, as you said, that they have few or no qualifications to discuss either ethics or AI.

The fact that they don't agree with the others on LGBT rights should only be an issue if they insist on trying to espouse their unrelated viewpoints using the panel, in which case by all means kick them off.

[durability]

Because you can’t look at these beliefs in a vacuum. Someone who’s against LGBTQ rights isn’t against it for the hell of it, they have some underlying reason such as religious ideology. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with religion, but when you believe that a man and a man together is unnatural and a sin against nature, then I have to wonder what other backwards regressive medieval beliefs they hold as well.

[yalue]

(Note that I'm not trying to straw-man you here, because I know you're only talking about the specific instance of this panel, which I've already agree was a farce to begin with. However,...) I still think it's harmful to society as a whole to try to use someone's views on any given topic as an excuse to refuse to work with them on something unrelated.

Say, for instance, that you're asked by a supervisor to collaborate with a Muslim living in a middle eastern country on writing a piece of software. For the sake of argument, say that this particular person believed that the laws recently enacted in Brunei were in line with the commands of Islam, and therefore just. (For the sake of argument only--obviously not everybody in those categories is like this at all--but clearly at least some must be or we wouldn't have situations like this recent one.) Would it be right to refuse to work with this person on writing say, some python code, when the topic of "sharia law" is never going to be a factor? Furthermore, by your argument, would you be willing to trust this person's judgement on software architecture when they have exhibited a, in your view, extreme lack of good judgement in another field?

Second, you can even take this argument to a higher level. You admit that the opposing party has a reason to believe what they believe, and I'd imagine that you'd even grant that they probably believe that their reasons for their particular position are good reasons. Leaving aside whether the positions themselves are good or not, how do you evaluate whether someone's reasons for holding a particular position are good? After all, a religious person may believe that one day an omniscient being will call them to answer for why they failed to keep holy commands in their life. To the holder of such a view, that's a pretty good reason to do some twisted stuff. If anything, (if their religion is right) such a reason for them holding their particular position (fear of eternal condemnation) may even be better to them than your reasons for your position are to you!