{"id":7891,"date":"2020-01-16T13:08:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T13:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dataethics.eu\/?p=7891"},"modified":"2020-03-10T09:42:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T09:42:45","slug":"follow-the-money-how-big-tech-buys-academia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dataethics.eu\/da\/follow-the-money-how-big-tech-buys-academia\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow the Money: How Big Tech buys Academia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Photo<\/p>\n

\u201cBig Tech manipulates Academia in order to avoid regulation\u201d, claims Rodrigo Ochigame in a recent article in The Intercept<\/a>. But \u00a0maybe the headline ought to be: \u201cBig Tech buys Academia in order to avoid regulation\u201d?<\/p>\n

It started back in 2016 when Silicon Valley lobbying effort consolidated academic interest in \u201cethical AI\u201d and \u201cfair algorithms\u201d.\u00a0One of the initial steps was\u00a0 the $27 million Ethics and Governance of AI Fund made by MIT and Harvard. The initial director was the former \u201cglobal public policy lead\u201d for AI at Google, and behind the Fund was the spider in the web, Joichi Ito, the former director of the MIT Media Lab. After the establishing of the Fund many other universities and new institutes received money from the tech industry to work on AI ethics. Most such organizations are also headed by current or former executives of tech firms.<\/p>\n

Examples are: \u201cthe Data & Society Research Institute is directed by a Microsoft researcher and initially funded by a Microsoft grant; New York University\u2019s AI Now Institute was co-founded by another Microsoft researcher and partially funded by Microsoft, Google, and DeepMind; the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI is co-directed by a former vice president of Google; University of California, Berkeley\u2019s Division of Data Sciences is headed by a Microsoft veteran; The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing is headed by a board member of Amazon\u201d.<\/p>\n

By proactively lobbying for moderate legal regulation encouraging or requiring technical adjustments Big Tech brand themselves as being “ethical” without conflicting significantly with their ultimate aim of gaining profit. While civil society have been – and still is – pledging for bans of facial recognition software\u00a0corporations try to shift the discussion to focus on voluntary \u201cethical principles\u201d:<\/p>\n