From a certain narrow, selfish perspective it's reasonable for Google to not want to have an AI ethics department placing a check on their leading edge research at all. Fortunately, we don't live in a world where corporations are the ones to determine right from wrong with total impunity.
> AI ethics department placing a check on their leading edge research
that reminds how in USSR each non-miniscule factory, organization, etc. had "the department #1" - it was an ideological check and control department which at sufficiently large/important organizations even included KGB officers.
You have identified a similarity between two situations, but it is not a similarity that matters. The distinction that matters is one of normativity, and on that measure there is clearly no equivalence to be drawn here.
every time it is the same - somebody got the power to enforce the prevalent ideology of the time and place, they happily do it under the premise that it is the most right and good ideology, and because of being such visibly pious followers and strict enforcers these self-declared occupants of high moral ground start to feel and behave themselves as more entitled and better than others. They highjack the cause and frame any disagreement with or critique toward them as a heretical attack on the cause. The main point here is that once something becomes an ideology the "right", "good", etc. gradually lose any meaning in that context, and the only thing which really continues to matter and grows more and more is the enforcement of the ideology.
You are right that there have been many iterations of normative standards, but that does not imply that all situations, ideologies, positions and so on are equally correct. It does not mean that we should stop trying to do better, nor that we have made no progress made through these efforts toward a better world.
No, they're describing a particular scenario where the Political Officers of those norms wind up being a sick joke of careerism and weaponized ideology.
The Soviet Union was about equality for workers. Who could be against that?
I should have been more precise. The phenomenon the other poster was describing is independent of a particular norm or ideology. Talk of evolving norms misses their point.
I see. Yes, any norm or ideology can and often does grow cancerous and counterproductive. What I mean to do is cancel one implicature instantiated by that statement. It's not a reason to be a nihilist, or to stop holding things accountable in a normative sense, in this case as justification for giving Google unchecked free rein of AI development. That the Soviet Union preached and botched "equality for workers" doesn't make it any less important an issue, and indeed we could see every failure toward that end as progress, as in "finding 10000 ways that don't work".
