Repository navigation
Consider addressing relationship with Google in CoC #2
Description
Activity
I support the impulse to be explicit about this. I am not entirely sure that the CoC is the best place for it (although I am not entirely sure that the CoC is not the best place for it either...). I suspect it makes sense to draft the language first and then figure out the best place for it to live.
I wonder if maybe in our Acknowledgements/Sponsors section it would make sense to have some notes there that parse some of these ideas.
I have the feeling that there's a lot of layers to unpack, particularly in the case with Google as a large corp entity > Google Brain > Google PAIR project > TensorflowJS team. Then there's Creative Lab which is a whole different island/onion with different layers in relation to the org.
In any case, I think all parties would benefit from the clarity on what our relationships look like in general.
After reading our CoC, I can imagine myself/someone asking: "This is a statement about ml5.js's commitment to AI ethics, but they work with Google and use Google technology. What is ml5.js's perspective on how Google conducts itself regaring AI ethics, or is this just an extension of Google's concerning approach to AI ethics?" I also think it's important to discuss this in the aftermath of the treatment and firing of Timnit Gebru (who used to be a leader on the AI Ethics team at Google).
To me, this conversation about sponsors and how they influence our values might makes sense to be included in or linked in the "Overview" section of the CoC document, where we make statements about what we as a team believe.
Reacted by cypress evelyn masso- added a commit that references this issue
on Feb 3, 2021
I believe that this Code of Conduct could be improved by considering ml5.js's relationship with our sponsor Google. ML work that Google has done (or may do in the future) possibly falls outside of the domain of the uses we support for ml5.js. Highlighting the contradiction/complexity in this document could be a helpful way to get ahead of confusion. It would also be helpful to clarify what strings are attached with their sponsorship of this project, or possibly with any of our sponsors.