The fact that tech is made based on whatever the tech tycoons feel is ok is concerning for a number of reasons but one of them is that they have no incentive to listen to us. They have a large following, the capital & other resources to build what they want how they want. https://twitter.com/L_badikho/status/1349776456180781056

They can anoint whichever young man they find “promising” a leader, provide him with incredible amounts of resources based on “good conversations” give him leadership positions—no receipts necessary. I’ve seen @JeffDean do this & even confronted him. That’s not how they treat us.

Last time I tried to engage with Yann, I provided a number of references, people etc to follow which he completely ignored. He then only engaged when he felt “attacked.” When I tried to write a paper at Google about things we were worried about, since they ignore us, I got fired.

A Google research VP objected to me saying not nearly enough resources are put in NLP in non western languages, analyzing issues etc by saying they’re doing a ton in “non English” languages. Thats most of the world. Do you think they’re doing content moderation in many of these?

A Facebook research VP is talking about “other countries” not having this polarization when many who know way more than me have been concerned about this. They choose to ignore many scholars, especially those not focused on the west, because they have no incentive to listen. None