Nov 26, 2019
Everything this week is related to AI and ethics.
Topic 1:
Follow-up on Episode 33 - AI ethics across cultural boundaries.
Karl: “China will call it protecting our culture.”
Ryan said: “Crossing geographic boundaries is one things, but crossing cultural boundaries is another.”
So, how do we address cultural norms and ethics in a worldwide discussion. Business ethics and laws are different everywhere, yet we practice economic relationships without boundaries.
What should we be discussing here? We have thoughts.
Topic 2:
More ethics. The Wall Street Journal had a long article addressing the fact that Google is messing with search results to fit corporate needs and political biases.
Google has more than 90% of the worldwide search traffic. They made about 500 changes to their search algorithm in 2010. And about 2400 in 2017, and 3200 in 2018. That's a lot of changes! Most of them are in response to some kind of request.
It turns out, Google’s super-secret algorithm favors big companies over small companies; favors eBay and other large advertisers; and favors already-big web sites over lesser-known web sites.
Google also works hard to crafting “knowledge panels” in order to keep you on their site. AND they change the results of auto-complete in an attempt to be politically correct and less divisive.
Related Link:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-search-algorithms-and-changes-your-results-11573823753
Related topic: AI is male biased
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/technology/algorithmic-ai-bias.html
Note: Update. In the days after this posted, Google’s “Top Stories” included links to articles refuting the WSJ post. :-)
And now for the Mail Bag . . .
Topic 3: Listener Joe asked our thoughts on companies that negotiate - or pay off - ransomware.
Should you (and your clients) negotiate with ransomware criminals? Should you engage a company to negotiate for you? What's "right" and what are the best practices.
Related ProPublica story on this topic:
https://features.propublica.org/ransomware/ransomware-attack-data-recovery-firms-paying-hackers/
:-)