Assuming this is sarcasm, you realize Google has a massive userbase all over the globe from all walks of life, right? Does it make business sense to accidentally exclude certain people? Or ethical sense?
Businesses exclude people all the time. E.g. many videos are geoblocked, and there's no way to view or purchase them in some countries.
Here are some other examples: I can use free version of Google Colab from Ukraine, but I can't pay for Pro version. (I can pay for Google Cloud, though.)
OpenAI blocks API dashboard access to IP addresses from Ukraine. (But it is OK if I use VPN LOL.)
So it seems blocking ppl is the norm. I guess "diversity and inclusion" is mostly about social topics within US, not about not excluding people.
In general it's about not accidentally excluding people. All the cases you propose are deliberate blocks for various (mostly legal) reasons. The deliberate blocks are considered in the review, and as long as there is a sound business case for launching with the exclusion, it goes ahead.
I went over the link and it does not explicitly include Ukraine. Instead it explicitly lists out the specific individuals and entities subject to the sanctions in this incredibly long and detailed list:
All your link does is reference the rationale for why certain individuals and entities are part of the SDN list, namely violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine, but no where in anything you've linked to does it state that Ukraine is in general subject to sanctions.
I don't understand this line of reasoning since it assumes inclusion training actually promotes inclusion. My experience has been that it usually means racial/gender intersectionalism training that everyone gets to swallow regardless of culture or belief because it's what white people in the us tech industry are passionate about right now.
The expectation isn't that you actually adopt or accept the values. The expectation is that you know that if you fail to do so (and you lack sufficient privilege in your organization), then you will be held accountable.
Practically speaking "woke" people would prefer to work with people who share values, but most of us will settle for people who can at least emulate a decent human being while interacting with other people at work.
Being "woke" goes beyond just being a decent person though, because most people's metric for decency is interpersonal decency. My understanding is that the sociological concepts that go into "wokeness" include intersectional analysis, microaggression theory, critical theory, 3rd wave feminism, gender theory etc. I think these ideas are mostly good (with the exception of microaggression theory), but they go way beyond "just be decent to other people" and into the territory of deep academic and systemic mindsets that are far from the default in the individualist West (and especially the US). I mean damn, half these ideas are French, and France is pretty culturally different from the US, French academia even moreso.
For example: not being racist on an individual level is pretty intuitive and obvious to most people, and mostly comes down to being a decent human being. Being institutionally anti-racist is a totally different thing, and way more involving, because you're not just not being a dick to people of a different race; you're trying to counteract systemic disadvantages.
It also presupposes such systemic disadvantages exist. Not sure why so many people from other countries immigrate to places that are so obviously systemically biased against them.
Or why when institutions such as Harvard actually do systemically discriminate against Asians it’s routinely ignored by the woke crowd.
Can anyone explain to me why Asians despite having some of the highest scores and GPAs have the lowest rate of admissions to some of the wokest institutions in America?
Why is the difference in incarceration rate between men and women or the police shooting rate not presented as systemic discrimination?
> Why is the difference in incarceration rate between men and women or the police shooting rate not presented as systemic discrimination?
I've tried multiple time the argument "if we have quotas in top positions like board of directors, high-prestige public institutions, we should also have them in bottom positions. Where are the inclusivity programs for prisons?". The answer that I've always received was "these are totally different", as in you end up in a board of directors due to chance and privilege, but you end up in prison due to your own actions.
While this argument is a bit stupid and not really constructive, I find it surprising how easily it reveals that people apply very different standards to different social issues. It seem that for most people, the mechanism which makes men dominate society is totally different from the mechanism which makes men be at the bottom of society. My explanation for that is that the glass ceiling comes with a glass floor.
I personally haven't found other people talking about things this way, but that may be me not researching enough. I also find it unfair that some people would be in this "glass box" just because of how they were born. But I'll admit that I find it troubling when I hear people talking about "breaking the glass ceiling" all the time, which seem to benefit mostly people already well-off in society that want event more (at least for positions like board of directors), while leaving people to rot in prison because they're male.
Your arguments betray that you don't actually understand what systemic disadvantages are. It's not used to mean intentional discrimination; it means that the way our society is set up results in discriminatory outcomes even if nobody is actively being discriminatory.
To address your gender disparity in incarceration example: yes, that is a systemic problem. Men commit more crime than women, and if you dig into the reasons why, it's going to relate to things like lack of opportunity to compete and succeed through legitimate means. People in poverty stricken areas have much less of a chance to succeed through legitimate economic means so the ambitious turn to crime. That's a systemic problem.
> Can anyone explain to me why Asians despite having some of the highest scores and GPAs have the lowest rate of admissions to some of the wokest institutions in America?
You mean they have some of the lowest rates of admission when corrected for GPA? Or lowest rates in some absolute sense?
> Why is the difference in incarceration rate between men and women or the police shooting rate not presented as systemic discrimination?
> Can anyone explain to me why Asians despite having some of the highest scores and GPAs have the lowest rate of admissions to some of the wokest institutions in America?
Because of legacy admissions, also known as “rich white kids skipping the line in spite of low GPAs”. There’s nothing “woke” about Ivy Leagues…
I agree that at one point maybe being oblivious to systemic problems could go along with being decent. But these days I don't see how being a decent human is compatible with either, "I don't want to learn whether you're getting the short end of the stick" or "I know you're getting the short end of the stick but I'll never do anything about it": neither seem decent to me.
I'll also note that although those particular theoretical frameworks were originally popular ways to understand certain problems, there are plenty of other ways to understanding.
As an example, let's take the microagression where white people want to touch black hair. This is a common problem [1][2][3], and one certainly can situate it within a whole host of racist microaggressions and a broader theoretical framework. But one can also just say, "Dude, black people are not pets. Keep your hands to yourself." Or in the middle, the handsy person can listen to black voices on this and get a personal understanding of why it's a demeaning thing to ask/do. That doesn't require any theory, just the sort of empathy and respect that is at the core of human decency.
I hate that you've called this "aggression", like it's a kind of morally reprehensible violence. People like to feel puffy hair, black person or not. Ask a white person with dreds if anyone has ever felt their hair. In Japan, people like to feel my arm hair, which is blonde and almost invisible and completely foreign to East Asians. It's harmless. It's completely natural that humans are interested in the physical variety of other humans. Now, you can obviously say or do something racist or mean while touching that hair, but the act of touching hair cannot itself be deemed aggressive without knowing the context. You would have to understand the social context of black people (apparently) being tired of being touched all the time in order to know that you should avoid doing this specific thing, which makes this a "faux pas".
> But these days I don't see how being a decent human is compatible with either, "I don't want to learn whether you're getting the short end of the stick" or "I know you're getting the short end of the stick but I'll never do anything about it": neither seem decent to me.
The novel part isn't the interpersonal part like "don't try to touch black people's hair" - that's just basic common sense, and it's extremely cringey that there are people who do that and think it's OK. The novel part is the systemic aspects of progressive thinking; my primary academic (hobby) interest is in systems theory and cybernetics, so through experience I can say for a fact that most people find systems thinking to be unnatural or alien. It's a different way of looking at the world to thinking in terms of intent and individual actions, which is the norm in the West.
how do you “counteract systemic disadvantages” without simply disadvantaging all white peoples ( that would be racist against white people)
Or by doing simply giving extra benefit (affirmative action) to one group ?
As we have seen with affirmative action it put people from china India and japan in the same bucket and give them less preferential treatment compared to African Americans. So it just seem that the minority which speak louder about injustice is the one that get the most benefit.
I agree that systemic racism is a thing but I have never seen a single proposed solution which is not simply “reverse racism” or positive racism.
We should be able to give equal opportunity to all group without explicitly helping one group or disadvantaging one group!
Let me frame this up in terms of white/black disparity in the US, as it's the clearest case: black people have for a long time been explicitly discriminated against at an institutional level, and even when you remove this, they will collectively remain at a disadvantage until corrective action is taken. Traditionally the suggested solution is reparations, but organisations have decided that to do their part they should engage in affirmative action. Of course affirmative action slightly disadvantages white people on an individual level, but the argument is that black people are disadvantaged on a societal level from said discriminatory history, so it balances out.
Affirmative action isn't actually a systemic solution though, it's an individualistic solution. A systemic solution would be something like creating a government fund to invest in infrastructure and enterprises in historically redlined areas and help to bootstrap the economic uplifting of poorer black communities.
Do bear in mind though that I'm from the UK so this is just my understanding of an issue I'm not personally familiar with.
> For example: not being racist on an individual level is pretty intuitive and obvious to most people, and mostly comes down to being a decent human being. Being institutionally anti-racist is a totally different thing, and way more involving, because you're not just not being a dick to people of a different race; you're trying to counteract systemic disadvantages.
Sincerely acknowledging this may be confusing: it’s the equivalent of recognizing that you’re being graded or compensated fairly while you see someone else not being treated that fairly… and then not shrugging it off.
It’s not a deep philosophical concept. It’s living in a society with responsibility to everyone else in your society.
I mean yeah if your culture or belief involves not treating people of different races or genders equitably, then the goal of the training isn't to change your mind. Swallow, follow, or get out of the way.
It seems like this kind of problems occur mostly within some specific areas, meanwhile OP seems to suggest that this kind of review should be applied for everything.
From a practical business perspective, performing a diversity and inclusiveness review is a risk management activity.
It doesn't really matter if the business strongly supports or opposes a particular set of diversity and inclusiveness goals from a fiduciary perspective, but it sure does matter if the business keeps losing money or missing targets because it is embroiled in scandals, paying out settlements to staff that have suffered discrimination, or being hauled in front of regulators to air their dirty laundry.
One would hope that being a decent place to work, and treating people fairly would be enough of an incentive, but for everyone else, there are risk management processes designed to have repeatable processes to identify business risks, escalate them to leadership, and presumably either accept the risk, or steer the project towards a solution that has a more acceptable risk profile.
Not every kind of review is applicable for every single launch, but diversity and inclusion is applicable to more than just AI (in general, I don't know what the review process or requirements are for D&I)
Sounds unnecessary. You just roll it into the D&I review. There is such a thing as a D&I review that comes down to a couple paragraphs on how this product has no features that are relevant for diversity or inclusiveness.
But Google added the review because they found that, in general, the average software engineer does not have the background or technical experience to make an educated guess on that topic.
There was that time when Google Photos started labeling black people as gorillas[1] in uploaded pictures. I suspect the training data for their classifiers "accidentally exclude[d] certain people": diversity & inclusion review would have avoided that kerfuffle.
By the same logic we can justify any [social issue] division. The sad thing is that the rules are arbitrary and do not help in solving the issue. Actually it is in the interest of the division to create or exaggerate problems to justify its existence.
Slightly OT, but a lot of products that are launched in multiple regions - Google included - exclude people who live in a country but don't speak the native language.
I work for a company from an English speaking country, and every time I need to reauthenticate with my Google account, it defaults to the native language of the country I'm in. They do have an option to change the language (in native language), but it's weird it defaults to that given I was last logged in with an account that is set to "English (US)" and my computer is set to the same.
Recently a large clothing retailer launched that is available in many other European countries, but it's only possible to use the native language here. It's even the same app, they just see your account is set to this country and only lets you view in that language.
Customer support is after the fact, reviews are before the fact. It's very cheap to do these reviews before launch and then you can point at those to say "we're trying!" while not providing any customer support.
The customer base is larger than the # of projects to review by many orders of magnitude. So yes, I think internal review will cost less when a single reviewed project/product might have millions of users.
I don't understand this argument. It's okay for things to be a certain way, because things are typically that way?
Apart from the circular reasoning, the practical impact is that you should also drop privacy review because corporations steal your data, security review because everyone gets hacked, readability review because there's a lot of legacy code, etc.
Is your argument here supposed to be "Nothing is all inclusive, therefore we shouldn't even bother trying"? If so, I'd argue that's a lot more ridiculous than a review process designed to help catch major inclusivity issues before they become problems.
Sure, but that's not a reason to not even ask the question. Maybe not every DI initiative turns out to be helpful or productive, but as someone who's privileged on pretty much every axis there is, I'd be grateful for the kind of internal support system that could give me an early warning sign for "hey, this design decision that made sense to you and your team has the potential to alienate user base X and there's a real possibility that if we launch in this state it's going to explode into a minor Twitter scandal."
Isn't this just called user testing? Also this is in the context of a fucking dataset. If data needs to go through DI in case something blows up on Twitter, I guess it's sad state we're in.
Does it? Seems to me data is a prime place for exclusion to occur. Example: a dataset of tagged photos for training a neural net to analyze facial expressions. All the photos are of white faces.
Maye they should run a study on diversity approved data set and see how well they match the demographics where it is being used. Then they could compare it to data sets without diversity reviews and see which one has better representation of the actually demographics. A kind of performance test for the diversity review.
If, for example, the dataset only contains white faces and is intended to train facial recognition then yes, it needs to go through some kind of DI review.
Wouldn't this review be done on the data collection and planning side, rather than at point of publishing though? Surely you can publish datasets of just white faces or just black faces if during planning that's what you intended to do for some reason?
Google can talk when they stop using a license by a domain squatting org who revised their history and has a pretty offensive line on their front page. COMMUNITY-LED DEVELOPMENT "THE APACHE WAY indeed. Worse, most of the links on Google search point to the org and not the actual tribes.