The Dangers of CS 'Philanthrocapitalism' (freedom-to-tinker.com) 41
Princeton University has a research center studying "digital technologies in public life," which runs a web site with commentary and analysis "from the digital frontier, written by the Center's faculty, students, and friends."
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp summarizes the site's recent warning on the dangers of "philanthrocapitalism," in a piece noting ominously that "The tech industry controls CS conference funding." "Research about the influence of computing technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), on society relies heavily upon the financial support of the very companies that produce those technologies," writes Princeton Research Fellow Klaudia Jazwinska of the dangers of 'philanthrocapitalism'. "Corporations like Google, Microsoft, and IBM spend millions of dollars each year to sponsor labs, professorships, PhD programs, and conferences in fields like computer science (CS) and AI ethics at some of the world's top institutions. Industry is the main consumer of academic CS research, and 84% percent of CS professors receive at least some industry funding."
"Relying on large companies and the resources they control can create significant limitations for the kinds of CS research that are proposed, funded and published. The tech industry plays a large hand in deciding what is and isn't worthy of examination, or how issues are framed. [...] The scope of what is reasonable to study is therefore shaped by what is of value to tech companies. There is little incentive for these corporations to fund academic research about issues that they consider more marginal or which don't relate to their priorities."
Jazwinska concludes, "Given the extent of financial entanglement between Big Tech and academia, it might be unrealistic to expect CS scholars to completely resist accepting any industry funding—instead, it may be more practicable to make a concerted effort to establish higher standards for and greater transparency regarding sponsorship.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp summarizes the site's recent warning on the dangers of "philanthrocapitalism," in a piece noting ominously that "The tech industry controls CS conference funding." "Research about the influence of computing technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), on society relies heavily upon the financial support of the very companies that produce those technologies," writes Princeton Research Fellow Klaudia Jazwinska of the dangers of 'philanthrocapitalism'. "Corporations like Google, Microsoft, and IBM spend millions of dollars each year to sponsor labs, professorships, PhD programs, and conferences in fields like computer science (CS) and AI ethics at some of the world's top institutions. Industry is the main consumer of academic CS research, and 84% percent of CS professors receive at least some industry funding."
"Relying on large companies and the resources they control can create significant limitations for the kinds of CS research that are proposed, funded and published. The tech industry plays a large hand in deciding what is and isn't worthy of examination, or how issues are framed. [...] The scope of what is reasonable to study is therefore shaped by what is of value to tech companies. There is little incentive for these corporations to fund academic research about issues that they consider more marginal or which don't relate to their priorities."
Jazwinska concludes, "Given the extent of financial entanglement between Big Tech and academia, it might be unrealistic to expect CS scholars to completely resist accepting any industry funding—instead, it may be more practicable to make a concerted effort to establish higher standards for and greater transparency regarding sponsorship.
This can be said about every single industry (Score:2)
There's corporate influence because that's where the money comes from. CS, bio, chem, and everything else. No surprises here.
The university gave up a long time ago (Score:2)
Although there are many reasons - far too many to get into now - universities long ago gave up any pretense of doing basic research. And even if some slips by, it needs to be valorized by some projected application (perhaps vaporware).
It's the same with ethics. Instead of being taught mainly by the philosophy department, it has been assimilated into any number of departments eager to teach some sort of "professional ethics." Rather than these fields being the application of basic ethical principles that th
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may I ask you to expand what does "these courses turn into some sort of apology for the field" exactly mean? I think I understand the basic idea but a couple real examples would help.
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I am using a literary term: an apology explains and justifies a way of life. A classic example is Socrates's Apology as penned by Plato.
In context I mean something like, instead of questioning the wisdom of some application, simply finding a plausibly acceptable way use it.
So, we have courses on a huge array of bio-technology issues, and we lecture our students on them, especially end-of-life stuff. But these courses are not fundamentally critiquing their field, and its utter reliance on a broken and moral
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utter reliance on a broken and morally bankrupt commodification of health-care.
What? "Commodification" makes healthcare accessible and affordable. How is that "morally bankrupt?"
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utter reliance on a broken and morally bankrupt commodification of health-care.
What? "Commodification" makes healthcare accessible and affordable. How is that "morally bankrupt?"
Healthcare is more affordable and accessible when it's free, like in most 1st world nations. The "commodification" of healthcare is what leads to our elderly taking out reverse mortgages to pay for healthcare because not even Medicare is free.
However, I would argue that healthcare isn't "commodified" since, for many people, it's a luxury good.
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The "commodification" of healthcare is what leads to our elderly taking out reverse mortgages
That is not what "commodification" means. Perhaps the word you are looking for is "commercialization."
Commodification means to make something fungible. Interchangeable. Wheat is a commodity sold by the ton because one grain is the same as another.
To make medical care a commodity means to make treatments standard and interchangeable, with transparent pricing, which results in care that is affordable and accessible.
However, I would argue that healthcare isn't "commodified" since, for many people, it's a luxury good.
Umm ... yes. Exactly correct. Except this sentence completely contradicts your first sente
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>What? "Commodification" makes healthcare accessible and affordable. How is that "morally bankrupt?"
Because turning something that people will literally spend all their money on (* and t hen some!*) to have makes perfect sense to turn into a commercial product? SO that it can be sold for the highest profit?
How does that make it accessible and affordable. That is morally bankrupt.
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Do you understand what a commodity is?
Commodification LOWERS profits.
It means your product is indistinguishable from your competitors' products, so your only option is to compete on price.
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It's not just research bodies, it's also standards groups. To to any standards group meeting at an IETF where there's something Google wants, for example, and you'll see total Google capture of the standards body: Wall-to-wall Google people, Google tshirts everywhere, Google's agenda pushed through by brute force. Go to any group that Google doesn't care about and it's a few enthusiasts and the usual roster of professional meeting-goers debating minor points in the spec.
The capture with bodies like the I
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universities long ago gave up any pretense of doing basic research
That's overly broad. The easy counterexample would be 99% of tenured faculty at any university's math department. The theorists (and arguably even experimentalists) in high energy and cosmological physics are also easy examples of investment in basic research.
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Though, come to think of it, back when home computers were hobbiest toys we didn't have nearly the same amount of research going on. It could be that these companies are just funding additional research, and the independent stuff which used to be more prominent is still around. You just don't see it because it's so much smaller by comparison.
Of course, on the other hand, it could b
Patrons and Sponsors are nothing new (Score:2)
Its also not clear that such direction is harmful. This direction can help promote the more practical or useful. Linux has been under such direction for a long time.
It also allows for more practitioners than there would otherwise be. Remove such support and practitioners will more often require independent wealth, locking out those with more modest finances.
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But capitalism is evil.
Signed,
rsilvergun and drinkypoo
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There are lots of cases of commercial interests in science being harmful. It doesn't *have* to be harmful, but good practices go a long way.
I've done medical research, which has a long history of the same kind of commercial involvement, and has dealt with some pretty bad consequences. Some simple requirements, like disclosing funding relationships and writing into the contracts that the commercial sponsor cannot block publication of results they don't like, can help a lot.
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There are lots of cases of commercial interests in science being harmful. It doesn't *have* to be harmful, but good practices go a long way.
The same can be said for non-commercial science. Humans screw things up, unintended consequences occur, etc. Peer reviews exist for a very good reason.
I've done medical research, which has a long history of the same kind of commercial involvement, and has dealt with some pretty bad consequences. Some simple requirements, like disclosing funding relationships and writing into the contracts that the commercial sponsor cannot block publication of results they don't like, can help a lot.
If you would like to argue that regulation and oversight is required I would absolutely agree. However for all science, not just commercial, where there is opportunity for harm. Lets consider Linux for a moment, the article does focus on the CS domain. Do we want to use Linux in energy infrastructure? Then perhaps we need to require a Linux distro that has ha
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This statement is incorrect. That's what my reply was about.
It's good practice in any publication, especially scientific ones, to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. We *require* it, sometimes legally, in some fields because it's proven to be such a problem.
Linux is not science, so I don't really follow your example.
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Its also not clear that such direction is harmful.
This statement is incorrect.
No its not, I am trying to point out that direction is not inherently harmful. At times it is useful, at times it is essential.
Even the National Science Foundation believes that scientists, when left purely to themselves, fall short with respect to bettering the world through their research. Hence their various training programs to better acquaint scientists with the realties of the world beyond their lab and office doors. Of course the NSF is one of those "evil" organizations that believe their money en
The same problem as for chemists.. (Score:2)
Someone I once worked with said that he changed from his doctoral chemistry program to computer science because he didn't like how everything that he was studying was just-another-chemical that causes cancer in order to advance some corporate interest. (At the doctoral level, your task is to create more of those cancer-causing compounds.)
This isn't a new phenomenon, so maybe look at other fields and see how they do it. Mathematicians? -> research on compression algorithms, principles to help construction
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Yes, it is a total mess. In CS almost all research is for short-term things, no fundamental improvements. That is why some problems have been with us for a long, long time now.
It is well-known on the other hand, how valuable independent research is. Unless and until we manage to get that funded again, we will not see improvements in many areas.
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History majors would (or should) already know that any field, profession, discipline, or study that doesn't have commercial applications has always been dominated by people who were very wealthy by some other means than what they were remembered for. That includes, by the way, the people who came up with ideas like capitalism (Karl Marx) socialism (Karl Marx) and communism (yep.)
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Let me guess, you decide what ideologies receive funding? Governments main interest is oppression and "popularity", always has been .. always will be. They will only fund whatever keeps them in power.
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Damn, you caught us!! Our secret Research Cabal of Government Science will now have find some other way to control the federal science spending. There's only 8 of us so its a big job.
You mean danger of Research (Score:2)
Nothing at all to due with philanthropy or capitalism. Same problem occurs with government funded research, university funded research, and even regular research.
People research things they are interested in, or things that the people that pay them are interested in.
Hero of Alexandria invented the first steam engines and built them... to 'fake' miracles for churches that were paying him. Doors that opened mysteriously, when steam heated things enough.
If someone with money had paid him to make a steam powe
What happens in Facebook Univ. Research... (Score:2)
...stays in Facebook. Universities Quietly Collaborate with Facebook [insidehighered.com]: "At the end of 2016, 16 universities entered into an agreement with Facebook to help the company quickly develop new technologies. Now, a total of 30 institutions have signed up to the Sponsored Academic Research Agreement, or SARA, according to Facebook. But little is known about what they've been working on. Contacted by Inside Higher Ed, none of 16 original universities in the agreement disclosed any details of their work with Facebook
Tax dodging is the problem (Score:2)
The fact that corporations can lobby for and get tax breaks and then decide how the money is spent is the problem. It doesn't matter if the venue is education or infrastructure or frankly anything else, letting corporations avoid taxation and believing it's going to be okay because they make donations to get more tax writeoffs and pay even less in taxes is frankly insane. It's like thinking you're going to get more daylight out of a time change. Nope, same amount of daylight, some of it is actually wasted a
UW on Tech $: Public Can't Handle the Truth! (Score:2)
Bill and Melinda Gates give $15 million to complete UW building that bears their names [seattletimes.com]: When the UW Regents voted Oct. 12 to name the building after the couple - officially designating it the Bill & Melinda Gates Center - the university said they had not donated any money to the building. On Wednesday, the day the final steel beam is to go into place, UW officials announced that the Gateses had, in fact, donated to the building, giving the UW one of the biggest single donations for the project. The dona
WTF (Score:2)
Ok, so then nothing gets funded? That's the better situation?? Go back to living in caves and being susceptible to nature and its elements? The whole reason we became civilized is that living like the rest of the animal kingdom sucked.
And no, having some committee or government decide funding is 10x worse. Government owns an army and a police, the tech companies have to go through the government if they want an army. In which case that proves the government is corrupt. So it's either a no-win or a some-chan
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Another stupid meme promulgated by you who knows nothing about how government works. Maybe sometime you'll mature out of Ayn Rand-speak.
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Ok, so then nothing gets funded?
You never fail to pull out some ridiculous non sequitur. Did you even read the summary? This conclusion does not follow from the anything written in the article.
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And no, having some committee or government decide funding is 10x worse.
Let me know when you have anything more insightful than "herp derp gubbermint se teh evul!11!1"
The only reason we had an "AstraZenica" vaccine for example (formerly known as Oxford-AstraZenica) was due to the previous decade or two of government funded research.
Moral of the story: (Score:2)
If giant companies can afford to give away millions and your schools need the money then you aren't taxing corporations nearly enough.
We need more generous donors to fund research (Score:2)
I read the summary, and skimmed over the article. What is the problem with wealthy companies using some of their surplus wealth to fund pure research activities? That would seem to be a good thing. The money has to come from somewhere, to fund research that does not provide immediate monetary returns. There is a very long history of this kind of charity. It does not imply that the money people decide what the truth is. It might look like that these days, but I believe reality always gets the last laugh.
It d
Society by billionaire's hobbies (Score:2)
Do you want your society to be directed by the whims of billionaires? Why are we so happy to have Aristocracy 2.0 deciding so much stuff?
Why is this a big deal? (Score:2)
It's not clear to me why this is all that shocking. Almost every science, and especially sciences/engineering with a strong commercial upside, has corporate influence.
There seems to be a damned if you do, damned if you don't aspect to this for industry. If they put money into researchers hands, then they're accused of meddling and unnaturally steering development. If they don't, they have to sit back and wait for research to happen with government funding, then scoop it up as it comes and commercialize it.
tangential, but apropos (Score:2)
Below is a little-remembered part of Eisenhower's speech that is more famously remembered as his warning about the 'military-industrial' complex.
With the end of the Cold War and the rise of the internet, the staggering wealth of some firms has to some degree replaced military spending with the power of a nascent Corporatocracy:
Isn't that normal? (Score:2)
Is tech the exception here? I assumed big oil funded petrochemical research, metal miners and refiners supported metallurgical research, etc.