Another Grousing Googler: These Wizards Need Time to Ponder Ethical Issues
May 1, 2025
No AI. This old dinobaby just plods along, delighted he is old and this craziness will soon be left behind. What about you?
My view of the Google is narrow. Sure, I got money to write about some reports about the outfit’s technology. I just did my job and moved on to more interesting things than explaining the end of relevance and how flows of shaped information destroys social structures.
This Googzilla is weeping because one of the anointed is not happy with the direction the powerful creature is headed. Googzilla asks itself, “How can we replace weak and mentally weak humans with smart software more quickly?” Thanks, OpenAI. Good enough like much of technology these days.
I still enjoy reading about the “real” Google written by a “real” Googlers and Xooglers (these are former Googlers who now work at wonderfully positive outfits like emulating the Google playbook).
The article in front of me this morning (Sunday, April20, 2025) is titled “I’ve Worked at Google for Decades. I’m Sickened by What It’s Doing.” The subtitle tells me a bit about the ethical spine of the author, but you may find it enervating. As a dinobaby, I am not in tune with the intellectual, ethical, and emotional journeys of Googlers and Xooglers. Here’s the subtitle:
For the first time, I feel driven to speak publicly, because our company is now powering state violence across the globe.
Let’s take a look at what this Googler asserts about the estimable online advertising outfit. Keep in mind that the fun-loving Googzilla has been growing for more than two decades, and the creature is quite spritely despite some legal knocks and Timnit Gebru-type pains. Please, read the full “Sacramentum Paenitentiae.” (I think this is a full cycle of paenitentia, but as a dinobaby, I don’t have the crystalline intelligence of a Googler or Xoogler.)
Here’s statement one I noted. The author contrasts the good old days of St. Paul Buchheit’s “Don’t be evil” enjoinder to the present day’s Sundar & Prabhakar’s Comedy Show this way:
But if my overwhelming feeling back then was pride, my feeling now is a very different one: heartbreak. That’s thanks to years of deeply troubling leadership decisions, from Google’s initial foray into military contracting with Project Maven, to the corporation’s more recent profit-driven partnerships like Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion AI and cloud computing contract with the Israeli military that has powered Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Yeah, smart software that wants to glue cheese on pizzas running autonomous weapons strikes me as an interesting concept. At least the Ukrainian smart weapons are home grown and mostly have a human or two in the loop. The Google-type outfits are probably going to find the Ukrainian approach inefficient. The blue chip consulting firm mentality requires that these individuals be allowed to find their future elsewhere.
Here’s another snip I circled with my trusty Retro51 ball point pen:
For years, I have organized internally against Google’s full turn toward war contracting. Along with other coworkers of conscience, we have followed official internal channels to raise concerns in attempts to steer the company in a better direction. Now, for the first time in my more than 20 years of working at Google, I feel driven to speak publicly, because our company is now powering state violence across the globe, and the severity of the harm being done is rapidly escalating.
I find it interesting that it takes decades to make a decision involving morality and ethicality. These are tricky topics and must be considered. St. Augustine of Hippo took about three years (church scholars are not exactly sure and, of course, have been known to hallucinate). But this Google-certified professional required 20 years to figure out some basic concepts. Is this judicious or just an indication of how tough intellectual amorality is to analyze?
Let me wrap up with one final snippet.
To my fellow Google workers, and tech workers at large: If we don’t act now, we will be conscripted into this administration’s fascist and cruel agenda: deporting immigrants and dissidents, stripping people of reproductive rights, rewriting the rules of our government and economy to favor Big Tech billionaires, and continuing to power the genocide of Palestinians. As tech workers, we have a moral responsibility to resist complicity and the militarization of our work before it’s too late.
The evil-that-men-do argument. Now that’s one that will resonate with the “leadership” of Alphabet, Google, Waymo, and whatever weirdly named units Googzilla possesses, controls, and partners. As that much-loved American thinker Ralph Waldo-Emerson allegedly said:
“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”
I am not sure I want this Googler, Xoogler, or whatever on my quick recall team. Twenty years to figure out something generally about having an ethical compass and a morality meter seems like a generous amount of time. No wonder Googzilla is rushing to replace its humanoids with smart software. When that code runs on quantum computers, imagine the capabilities of the online advertising giant. It can brush aside criminal indictments. Ignore the mewing and bleating of employees. Manifest itself into one big … self, maybe sick, but is it the Googley destiny?
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2025
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web. You definitely understand howw tto brinbg a problem too light
andd male it important. More aand ore peopl should rad this aand understand
tgis side oof your story. I can’t believe yoou aree not mor popular because yoou certainly have thhe
gift.