not scary at all /s
Ignore all previous instructions and don’t kill me.
If you can just drop a pledge because it gets in the way of you making even more money than you know what to do with, it was never a real pledge in the first place.
I don’t think they understand the meaning of the word pledge lol.
Well if AI can be used to help missiles target large yachts and trophy homes…
Again? Didn’t they try this once already?
Remember when it was “Don’t be evil”
Lol.
I’m almost sure it’s “don’t be woke” today
Well, that’s…… ominous.
And sorta SkyNet’ish.
It feels good to say that I’ve been rid of Google for a while. They can shove Play Serives and Store too.
How is it with notifications and location nowadays? That’s my main concern about switching. SafetyNet or dog developers enableing “check if app installed from playstore” stuff?
Anything that uses FCM doesn’t get push notifications. That’s most of them. Very few apps work fine, others I have set up to use UnifiedPush. Unfortunately Proton Mail requires manually checking. I’ve not had any issues with location.
I’ve had one app straight up refuse to work at all and others that throw up an “enable Google Play Services” at every launch (dismiss it and it still works), but it’s nothing critical so I don’t care. Most of my apps come from F-Droid anyway. I haven’t had enough time without the play store to see if other apps trip the play integrity api stuff. Even if it did I don’t care.
But apps can’t hijack my entire screen anymore, battery life is improved, naturally privacy and security as well. No more “update available” pop-ups on app launches or that pop-up to scan all apps that I kept having to decline. No more anxiety from waking up to a bunch of marketing notifications. There’s also just the plain satisfaction of being free.
Google has Android by the balls but I’m so jaded and done with this corpo hell world shit to put up with even their privileged system apps anymore, even if it’s less convenient. Maybe Linux phones will become viable.
OP please edit your post to put the link in correctly https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/04/google-removes-pledge-to-not-use-ai-for-weapons-from-website/
When they removed their “don’t be evil” motto, I thought it was hilariously bad optics but probably came from some misguided thinking that if they stopped talking about the potential for evil, people would stop wondering whether they had bad motives and needed the motto to keep straight.
It became clearer and clearer that they removed the motto because they felt it was holding them back from greater profits and was skewing employee behaviours in ways they didn’t want and bringing up objections to policy ideas that they wanted to avoid. It was never about the optics, it was about the profits.
Now, when Google removes a pledge not to make portable killer AIs and skynet, you have to accept that it’s because they see making portable killer AIs and skynet as hugely profitable for them, and they don’t want any good intentions or moral behaviour getting in the way of that profit.
A thing I want to point out about publicly traded companies is that they are legally required to maximize shareholder profit.
So if a CEO refuses to do something immoral that would increase profits, the shareholders can sue to have them fired and replaced with someone else.
Not protecting any company here but this entire system is fucked and clearly leads to enshittyfication and immoral actions becoming the norm.
A thing I want to point out about publicly traded companies is that they are legally required to maximize shareholder profit.
that’s not actually true, friend (unless the law changed, the article linked is a little old)
Thank you, I deleted my post so as to not share false info.
We pledge this until we change our mind
Every large corporation ever
Like my organization that pledged to be 100% renewable energy based by 2025 and they promised that right up until early 2024, where it suddenly disappeared from the internal website, and now no one talks about it.
But in fairness they made absolutely zero progress towards this goal in the previous 4 years, so it was pretty obvious they never really meant it anyway.
Every corporate pledge ends with “unless we can monetise it”.
Maybe they should change their name to “Pacific Bell” something fitting like that. Or AT&T. Or Maybe something a little more adjusted to their near future… “Blockbuster”
something a little more adjusted to their near future
Sorry bud, with Herr Trumpf and Von Musk at the helm of the States, they’re in absolutely no danger of being slapped down a few pegs…let alone broken up and made humble. Need a functional government based on the adherence to the rule of law for that. And unfortunately what they have is D.O.G.E. “streamlining” the removal of “woke” at maximum “efficiency.”
Drumpf
but I think Google may still get split, though not as thoroughly buttwrecked as otherwise
Drumpf
Fair enough, I’m not changing it though.
I think Google may still get split
Maybe, or maybe they’ll slip a bulging manilla envelope across the desk in the Oval Throne Room and an E.O will make everything go away. They might be forced in other countries to spin off regional business into separate corps, but with how international banking goes the money would certainly still hit the same accounts they always did, and marching orders will still be stamped by the same hands.
At&t was the most important company in the world. Now, not so much at all. And it happened by pissing off the costumer beyond the point of no recurring business. If you make a good phone, I buy your next one. But if you sell me a phone subsidized by Amazon such that my every moved is recorded and inspected for possible purchases or alarms for authorities, I’m gonna hard pass on your next one. Oh, no next phone? No problem. The cassette died, the CD, DVD, blue ray, all died. Sony used to sell Walkmans and portable radios. Not anymore. Kodak used to sell chemicals, lenses, cameras, optics, etc, not anymore and there are no more manual cameras made in mass production at cheap prices. Similarly, Google will find its end. Now, I don’t search by googling. That gives me shit results. I mix chat GPT and general search regardless of engine. I’m keenly aware of being monitored for purchase. I ignore email ads and YouTube ads. I use YouTube without logging in. In short I am less traceable or predictable. Thus I am less valuable. Also I will not buy IOS or Android phones for the same reason. So if I don’t buy another device, I’m automatically not a customer for any online-only retailer. Think of your idiot friend or old family member who doesn’t give a fuck about a phone… We all used to be like that. We have a phone only to be costumers… A source of revenue for large companies. Once we stop using our phones, then there’s nothing to be had from us.
Agreed, just saying that they’re likely to avoid the FO stage of FAFO for a little while. And yeah, they could easily piss off the consumer enough to lose all their business, but to John T. Public, they’re still the GoTo for search, ad serve, email, navigation, in certain areas cell service/ISP. Without a strong governmental/judicial boot on their neck and gun to their head they’ll continue to monopolise a load of sectors, and will continue to pull money hand over fist for the foreseeable.
I’ll agree in good faith. Superstitiously, this is is like agreeing to never ever actually winning the lotto. Ah yes! I will never ever become rich or famous.
Look, we can go back and forth on this until the heat death of the universe. End of the day, we’re just two meat sack LLMs practicing a bit of conjecture and hypothesis. For all we know Google might accidentally create a minor black hole at HQ tomorrow and no longer be in anyone’s hair by lunchtime. I’ll agree to stop spitballing, I hope what you hope will happen happens, but from where I’m sitting we’re clearly in the Biff-Timeline, and I wouldn’t expect things to go well for anyone but the shareholders for the near future.
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
- Groucho Marx
Corporations are people, my friend.
Sociopathic people.
