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@on_code@mastodon.gamedev.placeDo you remember when Google's tagline was "don't be evil"?
I do.
"Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance" by Nitasha Tiku for the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/04/google-ai-policies-weapons-harm/
@on_code and you almost believed them when they withdrew from China around 2008, just to find out they're still taking money from Chinese companies for showing their ads elsewhere in the world
Good to know.
(They were already adversaries at best, of course.)
@on_code did anybody believe in that original pledge in the first place?
@on_code they dropped that marketing slogan many years ago 
@on_code I was thinking this last night.
@on_code «The venture capitalist [Josh Wolfe] says this change suggests Alphabet is looking at Palantir, Microsoft, and Amazon, "who have been working closely with the government in the military, and they're now effectively saying, 'We have to work on weapons systems and surveillance.'"» 
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/video/alphabet-reverses-ban-ai-weapons-232317714.html
@on_code Google don't.
@on_code they should replace it for "Evil by default"
But let's think about it, it's nothing personal, that's the way "for-profit organizations" work, if they don't do it, some other company would.
That's just one of the reasons we should promote a huge diaspora from these trap technologies, and for god's sake, not migrate to similar ones like some people are doing from x to bluesky.
Now we don't have to be creative and imagine ways it could go wrong...
@on_code at some point “I remember when Google’s tagline was don’t be evil” will be something said from a recliner to incredulous grandkids.
@on_code I don’t. “don’t be evil” was never Google’s tagline or motto. It was a comment in an HR manual that pundits took out of context.
Just as they are now taking an internal guide out of context and calling it a pledge.
Google’s original business plan included a mechanism designed to circumvent the intent of the GPL. They have always been as they are now. Maybe it’s time for pundits to stop acting as if they were ever different.