August 07, 2017

Google should do a soul-search

located:	USA
editor:	Gurmeet Singh

In a famous lecture, David Foster Wallace asked his audience to always remember that the world they see is not objective reality, but one skewed by the myriad internal prejudices and tastes which they, as perceivers, bring to bear. He argued that these conditioned biases were so part of our make-up, we wouldn't notice them, and mistake them simply for the world; just as a fish might not realise that it swims about in water.

The recent Google scandal made me think of this lecture for two reasons:

• Firstly, it attempts to work in a similar area of unconscious bias.
• It illustrates once again that the products and services we produce and use do not exist in vacuums, but are inflected with the prejudice, bias and thoughts of the producers.

So what is the scandal exactly? A software-engineer at Google internally circulated a 10-page document which argued against the company's hiring policy, and general commitments to diversity. That is, it stated that the company was unconsciously (or very consciously) left-wing; and furthermore, its policies of hiring using positive discrimination were "morally" wrong, since this discrimination meant that biologically-better-suited people missed out on jobs. To clarify, the screed argued that men are simply biologically better at software engineering, maths, computer science etc. than women; and by implication, white people better than other ethnicities at this kind of work.

If you're the kind of low-iq specimen that likes to marvel at biologically-superior brainpower, here's the full thing.

The engineer claims that he values "diversity and inclusion, [and is] not denying that sexism exists, and [does not] endorse using stereotypes." And yet, a mere paragraph or so later, makes these kinds of claims: "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things". This is the well-written version of 'I'm not racist, but-'.

Tech and startups in the West are overwhelmingly white and male. It's been speculated that the reason for this, is that computer science is an overwhelmingly male course; and the reason for that is, universities haven't been able to reach more women to apply for these courses - the same goes for ethnicities. So it's a structural problem: the kinds of route into tech are tailored to men. Having worked in these fields myself, I can say there is a weird-amount of pseudo-scientific rationalisation in the field which 'explains' why women and minorities are excluded from the field - and the Google document is one more version of this rationalisation.

And yet, Google is one of the most influential companies on the planet. If it is designed by people who think like this, then the product will inevitably be affected. Get wise Google - do a soul-search: People do not want this from you.