takeitto's comments

The EU had self-driving cars in the 1980s (Ernst Dickmanns & Mercedes, demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I39sxwYKlEE ). The most expensive robot car project was in Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project).

I do agree that the EU has less of an entrepreneurial spirit. Some cultural elements, but also practical: It is difficult to scale an app, since there are such large language and culture barriers between EU member states. There is a decades long brain-drain of highly technical (AI) people. Finally, it is very hard to compete with US companies, as they skirt the rules, winning all network effects with huge VC infusions.

I always suspected some of that was accomplished with military and intelligence support: The American economy and intelligence apparatus stands to benefit a lot with the entire world using Google and Facebook. The other side of this coin is that the pro-privacy anti-surveillance movement may also be supported by foreign intelligence agencies in an attempt to hurt US economic and military interests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernout_%26_Hauspie#History was close to establishing an AI-type Silicon Valley in Belgium in the early 2000's, but was unsuccessful.

You'd also make me happy :).

But they still process European user data if they do not block my IP. So they are not complying at all with GDPR's main requirement, just a poorly singled-out subclause.

The internet doesn't know, but e-commerce/data business pretty darn well knows where their customers/users are situated.

The old web was mostly static websites. We spoke of visitors. The new web is app-ified/interactive, walled off to logged-in agreement-abiding geolocated users, and even a single logged-out "visit" broadcasts this to 100s of trackers who will remember your every move online.

If you log for security purposes that is a "legitimate interest" which would allow you to keep doing that, provided:

- You make a note that this data is being logged.

- You state for how long this is logged (6 months is reasonable), and justify that time frame.

- You state who else has access to these logs.

- You state what steps you have taken to try to minimize unauthorized access to these logs.

- In a register (these statements should be delivered on request of a law supervisor) you also provide your personal details, which users are affected by this data processing, and your goal (which should be something along the lines of: "fraud prevention and intrusion mitigation" to have legitimate interest. Expect big companies with law firms to push this "security interest"-angle hard, as they try to justify their data processing).

Pretty reasonable, no? It would be nice if the large web logging softwares provide standard options to automatically limit disclosure of PII web logs.

> It's a foreign requirement that feels like a violation of sovereignty.

Sure, if you cater to users in your own country. If you cater (read: deal with data) to users from the EU, you should follow local consumer protection laws.

EU laws have always been more strict than US privacy laws: This caused unfair competition, where US companies were free to export their privacy-damaging business model overseas, while local companies were forced to respect privacy. Respecting privacy is just not very competitive/profitable at the moment.

Your viewpoint pushed to the extreme (sorry if you don't recognize your original view): China selling counterfeit goods or unsafe toys to the US, and feeling like any push-back is messing with their sovereignty of lax copyright -, trademark -, and health laws.

I am European browsing from a non-EU IP. Seems to me a blanket ban on EU IPs is both draconic and ineffective.

As for SV seeing GDPR as more of a hindrance: SV was build on the freemium model of gathering as much data as possible. Companies were funded under the assumption that their user growth would lead to valuable data stores.

GDPR and an increased privacy aware public are existential threats to these companies, as there is little chance to pivot to a non-data-use company. You have to start over.

I hope we will look back at these companies as ugly centralizing dinosaurs, as little by little, the consumers realize the power they gained back (or always had) over their usage and data, does not justify these business models to exist.

(Also, GDPR, even when seen as an opportunity, _is_ a hindrance to implement. Regulation in response to market evils is known to be heavy-handed and clumsy).

I believe this is what Antonov meant when he said: "A pre-designed scenario is being implemented, Again, we are being threatened. We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences." in response to the latest Syria strike.

WWIII may not be nukes, but complete economic chaos after banks, hospitals, militaries, and electricity networks are taken down.

Unfortunate hit piece.

Even worse than having your peers crap on you, is the author stating that you wish these crappy remarks don't define your profile (like they did previous profiles), and then having exactly that happen.

This will now probably forever be his angle in the popular media: Godfather of AI, mistaken, scoffed at by his peers. Not necessarily wrong, but not flattering either.

I can relate to the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing your ideas being bandied around as original, without any attribution. Of course someone in the field of reinforcement learning is obsessed with the credit assignment problem, no matter the time passed. How can AI researchers hope to solve this pressing problem, when they can't even assign credit to the originators of their ideas?

I wonder if this harsh piece would have been written the way it was, if the author realized that Schmidhuber may be on the spectrum, and that his erratic and obsessive behavior is an ailment, not a deliberate choice.

In the future, Schmidhuber will be mentioned in the same breath as Turing. Of his peers wishing he'd shut up, I don't have the same expectation.

I'm not saying he broke any policy. People will simply misrepresent - or take advantage of - his just well-intended representation.

Just take out of context or read the following with a different job role and see why these guidelines make sense:

> we are Google ... These kind of systems need 99% precision ... I feel it was full of tiny imperfections ... Internally, the criticism is brutal ... It seems that I am "attacked" primarily by fellow googlers ... There are a dozen variations of this question already for TGIF ... the team wanted to fake a demo, they could had done that years ago ... a team at Google could fake something at this scale and have the face of the company back it at our most high-profile event of the year ... Would volkswagen be able to do what they did ... I've been told that there were cases were the human would react by saying "no, you are not a robot, you are human!" when they were told that the caller was a bot

The article and comments you are responding to is about the demo being poorly faked.

You seem to conflate this with another issue with the demo: It was so good that it seemed real, and you deem this to be deception/deceptive.

While I may share some of your concerns, I can't help but compare it to the rants against video games: unhealthy, fake social interaction. Often used by politicians without any scientific backing of their claims.

I do understand the current attraction from the general public to the unsurprising AI research going on at top labs. You don't need any relation to the field to muse about killer robot singularities and 2000 year old ethics philosophy, and no one will brand you a fool like they did to the people warning about earth-eating black holes at CERN.

I am not a Googler, and these guidelines are available here: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html (since they also apply to investors and external contractors who may not have access to internal policies).

I am not trying to imply you are against the policy, just that it isn't a good idea to make yourself an accessible target in a "witch hunt".

The media is clearly trying to kick up some shit. They know Duplex is hot, and so they try to find another angle/drama/controversy to continue the clicks-cycle. If they had anything of substance, then plenty of AI researchers would be lining up to be cited, warning against AI-hype and winters. The article would be called: "Google faked its Big A.I. Demo!". Now they are still on the prowl for anyone that will dignify them with a soundbite, be that on social media.

Notice how few Facebookers stepped up here on Hackernews, when Facebook was the target of a negative news cycle. There is just no winning, just a lesser of two evils: Take a temporary hit to your pride, or let the media and fellow Hackernews posters take everything you say as an official company statement, attacking you and your colleagues while you weren't even directly involved in the project and can do little to alleviate any concerns or lies.

My 2 cents: The demo was not faked. But of course the samples were cherry-picked to make for a good demo. Also, a large part of the negative coverage stems from irrational fear or misunderstanding of AI, futurism potential, and the first uncanny valley for natural conversation.

It is just not a good idea to authenticate yourself as a Googler in these sorts of discussions. If there is doubt in the media about a tech from Google, Google's PR department is more than capable to handle that in due time.

I think part of this guideline applies, and following it should avoid disclosure, embarrassment, or being forced to speak on the defensive of an entire company (not a job that most developers are automatically good at).

> You probably know that our policy is to be extremely careful about disclosing confidential proprietary information. Consistent with that, you should also ensure your outside communications (including online and social media posts) do not disclose confidential proprietary information or represent (or otherwise give the impression) that you are speaking on behalf of Google unless you’re authorized to do so by the company. The same applies to communications with the press. Finally, check with your manager and Corporate Communications before accepting any public speaking engagement on behalf of the company. In general, before making any external communication or disclosure, you should consult our Employee Communications Policy and our Communications and Disclosure Policy.

While a compiler may block you from writing faulty code, the media will just take your faults, and then present them as truths coming from upper management.