The world knows about tech’s love affair with, and misuse of, personal data. The continual ignoring, minimizing and excusing of hate speech, revenge porn, fake news, bullying, etc.
Then there is its totally irrational attitude/belief that people will be kind and good to each other online no matter what they are like in the real world.
Given the prevailing attitude, would a hot tech startup have a conscience?
So would a founder, a self-described “technology enthusiast,” create an AI app that went viral and then shut it down because of the way it was being used?
DeepNude was built on Pix2Pix, an open-source algorithm used for “image-to-image translation.” the app can create a naked image from any picture of a woman with just a couple of clicks. Revenge porn activists said the app was “absolutely terrifying.”
As to the above question, the answer is “yes.”
The DeepNude team was horrified, believing “the probability that people will misuse it is too high.”
“We don’t want to make money this way. Surely some copies of DeepNude will be shared on the web, but we don’t want to be the ones who sell it,” DeepNude wrote in a tweet. “The world is not yet ready for DeepNude.”
Pix2Pix was developed by a team of scientists, who now believe the industry needs to do better and not just release their work to the world at large.
“We have seen some wonderful uses of our work, by doctors, artists, cartographers, musicians, and more,” the MIT professor Phillip Isola, who helped create Pix2Pix, told Business Insider in an email. “We as a scientific community should engage in serious discussion on how best to move our field forward while putting reasonable safeguards in place to better ensure that we can benefit from the positive use-cases while mitigating abuse.”
One can only hope that the scientific community does, indeed, find a way to do good while avoiding the worst of the negative fallout from discoveries.
And hats off to the DeepNude team.
It’s really inspiring to see such a concrete example of doing the right thing, with no shilly-shallying or dancing around the decision.
But I do wonder what would have happened if either the developers or the scientists were beholden to investors.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that are still relevant, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies are a collection of some of the best posts during that time.
Today is a two-fer, because, when discussing leadership, commentary on followers should be required.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since these two posts, 5 years on the first and 10 years on the other, were written and the world has changed drastically. It is far more complex and moves much faster than ever before. What hasn’t changed — contrary to the impression you get from both traditional and new media, whether mainstream or on the fringes — is how much influence so-called leaders actually exert on their followers.
Anyone reading the news—local, national or global—knows that hate and intolerance are increasing at an alarming rate everywhere.
Also, because there have been/will be so many elections around the world this year ‘leadership’ is in the news even more so than usual.
What responsibility do leaders—business, political, religious, community—bear in fostering hate and intolerance?
Not just the age old race and gender intolerance, but the I’m/we’re-RIGHT-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else.
The ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ attitude is as old as humanity and probably won’t ever change, but it’s the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.
And leaders aren’t helping; in fact, they are making it worse.
During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a façade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK, but doesn’t.
Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals—whose only error was following their own beliefs.
We are no longer entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends someone next door, the other end of the country, or the far side of the globe.
I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill.
Rand said absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true, since her selfishness couldn’t impinge anyone else’s right to be selfish.
Leaders aren’t responsible; we are because we go along with it—as did the Germans when Hitler led them down the hate and intolerance path.
In general, followers fall into two categories—thinking and unthinking. All of us have issue-specific litmus tests and look for a general comfort level with other followers.
Thinking followers usually have a broader definition of comfort, critically evaluate individual ideas and attitudes, as opposed to blind across-the-board acceptance, and are more willing to consider compromises. They often challenge their leader offering additional considerations, thoughts, suggestions, as well as open disagreement.
Unthinking followers are more emotional, rarely disagree or argue and may opt out of all thought and consideration following blindly and allowing the leader think for them. At their worst, unthinking followers are fodder for cults.
Most of us would classify ourselves as thinking followers, but are we? I know that politically I have one litmus test that is absolute and a couple of others that have high priority without being locked into specifics. Beyond that, I’ve always considered myself pretty open.
However, as extremists have polarized various issues I find myself becoming more adamant in my own feelings and less open to listening to those who believe that their views represent truth with a capital T — but I still want to live in a country where they have the right to say it.
I’ve lived a long time and I never thought I’d say this, but the rise of social media, with its ability to say anything anonymously sans responsibility, has seriously compromised my belief in free speech.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Fortunately, the folks with whom I usually spend it are out of town. I say ‘fortunately’, because in my current mood I would be hard-pressed to cover my true feelings.
While the narrowest definition of “my world” keeps chugging along, with nothing causing woe, my full world is, as the saying goes, going to hell in a hand-basket.
Or, more accurately, on a well-greased slide made of hate.
I understand hate up close and personal, as opposed to an intellectual or conversational concept.
Over the years I’ve built up layers of armor starting around age 5
Being a black man, I prefer a racist that’s honest about who he is and what he is. I prefer working for such a person because I know what to expect. I presume it would be the same for you as a woman regarding sexists. These days no one is a racist, we just have “unconscious biases” that prevent us from taking unpopular positions and that ensure that the powerful can continue to exclude the less powerful.
Politically correct environments rob me of information, choice, and the ability to navigate astutely to attain my objectives.
What a difference two years and one election makes.
Kevin no longer wonders who is a racist — it’s very obvious.
And I get to end my life amidst the same hate I grew up with.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More technical problems made this post very late. My apologies.
Be sure to ready Ryan’s post tomorrow; he’s far more upbeat than I.
Have a wonderful turkey day and I’ll see you all Friday.
Today is (or should be) the first day of the rest of your life speaking out and actively working for the world in which you want to live. To do everything you can to quell the rise of hate and change the direction of your world.
If you care it’s time to act — not wait for the other guy to do it.
I’m sure that some of my readers are happy with its direction and will be very unhappy with this post. They may even unsubscribe (it’s happened in the past), but that is their right and I respect that.
But hopefully the rest of you will heed this call to action, take time to read the links and time to think about the world you want — not just for yourself, but for you current/future kids and their kids, etc.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This resonates with me because I am Jewish, granted I’m a sectarian Jew, but bigots don’t make that distinction.
My father’s family had the choice of emigrating from Russia or dying by the had of the Cossacks.
My Romanian grandmother was lucky. Her sister’s husband had only enough money to bring one sister to the US and she drew the short straw. The rest of the family died in the Holocaust.
I doubt it was an accident that the executive order was issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The hate being shown to this wave of refugees echoes the hate shown to past waves, but this time it’s far more hysterical and fraught.
As for the argument that the Muslim ban fights terrorism, what really are the odds that you might die in a terrorist attack in the US, especially compared to all the other ways to die? Take a look at the hard data.
Yes, ISIS is real, but terrorism on our soil is an excellent cover for one of the truly ugly underlying reasons today’s refugees are so violently rejected — they are black.
Anand Sanwal provided an insightful comment in his typically irreverent style.
So I landed in India with my daughter on Saturday and saw the news about immigration changes in the USA. I don’t think American citizens of Indian descent are banned from re-entering the USA yet, but let me know if anything changes as I got another 5 days here and things appear to be changing quickly. For the time being, I believe my type of brown person is still considered ok so that’s a relief. But definitely let me know if that changes. Thanks.
From Trump to Tea Party you are seeing the second coming of WASP thinking.
If this isn’t who you are then you need to speak out.
In case you didn’t see this in BuzzFeed, a group of techs got together and made a pledge.
A group of nearly 60 employees at major tech companies have signed a pledge refusing to help build a Muslim registry. The pledge states that signatories will advocate within their companies to minimize collection and retention of data that could enable ethnic or religious targeting under the Trump administration, to fight any unethical or illegal misuse of data, and to resign from their positions rather than comply.
Not luminaries, but people like you.
As of 10:30 pm Pacific Wednesday there were 1215 signatures.
The full text is at the pledge link (above) as are the instructions on how you can sign. There are also links if you want to be a more active participant or just want more information.
Why should you do it?
The words of Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor and rabid anti-Nazi, who spent seven years in a concentration camp explain it best.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Actively or passively; loudly or quietly you need to speak out over the next two years.
And in two years it will be up to you to help take back Congress.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time. It’s been four years since I wrote this, but it could have been anytime in the last several decades. The time difference wouldn’t have been that noticeable, except that what I described just keeps getting worse. I find it both sad and disgusting that we humans seem incapable of growing and, instead of moving forward, we move backwards. Read other Golden Oldies here
Anyone reading the news—local, national or global—knows that hate and intolerance are increasing at an alarming rate everywhere.
Also, because there have been/will be so many elections around the world this year ‘leadership’ is in the news even more so than usual.
What responsibility do leaders—business, political, religious, community—bear in fostering hate and intolerance?
A lot.
Not just the age old race and gender intolerance, but the I’m/we’re-RIGHT-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else.
The ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ attitude is as old as humanity and probably won’t ever change, but it’s the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.
And leaders aren’t helping; in fact, they are making it worse.
During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a façade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK, but doesn’t.
Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals—whose only error was following their own beliefs.
We are no longer entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends someone next door, the other end of the country, or the far side of the globe.
I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill.
Rand said absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true, since her selfishness couldn’t impinge anyone else’s right to be selfish.
Leaders aren’t responsible; we are, because we go along with it—as did the Germans when Hitler led them down the hate and intolerance path.
Giant corporation, medium company, small biz or startup chances are you have in the past or are working now with someone you can’t stand.
The cause can be anything from annoying habits to seriously bad performance, but the result is the same—it drives you nuts.
HBR provides some good advice on the subject in How to Work with Someone You Hate that is useful to anybody and in non-work situations.
But there is one attitude I’ve relied on for most of my life that has served me well, “consider the source of the comment before considering the comment itself.”
Typically, we do the opposite taking in the words along with any baggage, and allowing them to do their worst.
Whereas, if we consider the source, including who said them, our relationship with that person, respect level, circumstances and context, the impact of what was actually said dissipates completely.
Considering the source is worth sharing with your kids, friends and colleagues.
Over the years I’ve found it takes the bite out of the majority of critiques, criticisms and commentary that fill our days.
Even remembering it late, after the hurt or upset has died down, has put things in perspective more times than I can count.
Try it; you’ll be surprised how much more positive, not to mention peaceful, your world will become.
Anyone reading the news—local, national or global—knows that hate and intolerance are increasing at an alarming rate everywhere.
Also, because there have been/will be so many elections around the world this year ‘leadership’ is in the news even more so than usual.
What responsibility do leaders—business, political, religious, community—bear in fostering hate and intolerance?
A lot.
Not just the age old race and gender intolerance, but the I’m/we’re-RIGHT-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else.
The ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ attitude is as old as humanity and probably won’t ever change, but it’s the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.
And leaders aren’t helping; in fact, they are making it worse.
During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a façade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK, but doesn’t.
Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals—whose only error was following their own beliefs.
We are no longer entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends someone next door, the other end of the country, or the far side of the globe.
I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill.
Rand said absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true, since her selfishness couldn’t impinge anyone else’s right to be selfish.
Leaders aren’t responsible; we are because we go along with it—as did the Germans when Hitler led them down the hate and intolerance path.
The Fourth of July; a day we celebrate our freedom that should include freedom from fear, hate and intolerance.
That thought reminded me of something I wrote in 2007 and it seemed apropos to share it with you today.
What responsibility does leadership—business, political, religious, community—bear in fostering hate and intolerance?
I’m not talking about race or gender issues, but prevalent the attitude that I’m/we’re-RIGHT-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else.
It’s not the ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ that bothers me, but the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.
During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a facade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK—but doesn’t.
Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers, in the name what their leader preaches, steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals whose only error was following their own beliefs.
No longer are we all entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends the person next door or someone living at the other end of the country.
It is the worst kind of selfishness.
I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill.
Rand replied absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true; since her selfishness couldn’t take away anyone else’s right to be selfish.
That about sums up my attitude
I just wish there were fewer people following all the Ellsworth Toohey types in today’s world.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Anyone reading the news—local, national or global—knows that hate and intolerance are increasing at an alarming rate everywhere.
Giant corporation, medium company, small biz or startup chances are you have in the past or are working now with someone you can’t stand.
It is the worst kind of selfishness.
