IBM undeniably ran the German Nazi death camps. Their instrumental role was cemented, literally, in places like Dachau.
I’ve been to plantations. I’ve been inside of execution chambers. I’ve walked the halls of death row. I’ve been to a lot of places where death and violence are, and have been, enacted on people. But I’ve never experienced the chill in my body and in my spirit that I did when I was walking through the gas chamber at Dachau. I was startled by how deeply I felt it in my body, how deeply unsettled I felt in my spirit. And then you realize how recent it was. This was less than 80 years ago.
IBM’s man Watson was responsible.
You’d think as a result of his role that the name would be sullied and untouchable, even if IBM successfully knit a “technology is neutral” narrative to avoid accepting guilt from directly facilitating and expanding genocide.
Ford undeniably inspired the German Nazi industrialization of genocide, which led to demand for IBM’s help.
Ford’s man Ford was responsible.
Again you’d think as a result of his role that the name would be sullied and untouchable.
Ford literally was cited by Hitler many times and in many ways as his inspiration for race-based state-led violence.
In both cases — Watson and Ford — we should ask did the misconduct of such wealthy men lead to any real justice for their victims?
Let’s just say… IBM has gleefully and cruelly promoted their “artificial intelligence” (AI) product billed to save the world as:
IBM announced WatsonX, an all-in-one artificial intelligence building tool for enterprises.
The X stands for amorphous, unaccountable, irresponsible.
Why not name it Hitler and get straight to the point? I jest, of course. But not really.
A recent attempt to use the dangeously-named Watson AI in a hospital setting had to be unplugged when it tried to kill (simulated) patients. Apparently these overseeing doctors weren’t profiting from death, a devastating blow to IBM’s historic sales model.
A good doctor sees the patient, not the symptoms. Watson saw the symptoms of inefficiency and lack of capability. It did not see the process of care and making whole, where doctors, not data, were what needed to be understood.
Watson saw symptoms of inefficiency… should be words engraved into the memorials at Nazi death camps that ran on IBM.
Wait, what?
Are you surprised that even the latest and greatest IBM machines that “learn” something, their best attempts at “intelligence”, were actually trying to kill the (simulated) patients that they promised to help?
… suggested a cancer patient with severe bleeding be given a drug that could cause the bleeding to worsen …
That drive to do the wrong thing was quite a big part of how Watson (let alone Hitler) became so suddenly wealthy, right?
Machines “know” this kind of detail in history, without understanding it. Even when humans say they don’t know (ignorant of their own history), machines parse easily the fact that Watson worked for Hitler on genocide as an “efficiency” problem.
Perhaps now you see why I write about technology history. This stuff helps predict future failures. Like the 1960s tragedy of Operation IGLOO WHITE (a billion/year U.S. foreign and domestic drone surveillance project that never worked).
Gaining a foundation of knowledge on what’s behind some American billionaire success (even just these two men out of hundreds or thousands) should give serious pause. Who thinks Tesla ever will do anything about fixing or changing its problems that have been rapidly killing so many people, related directly to billionaire profits?
Will the latest obnoxious American billionaire, known for spreading toxic lies like it’s 1933 again, ever be held to account? Allegedly he is using Twitter right now to argue a swastika tattoo doesn’t prove someone is a Nazi. What a guy.
Watson, Ford and of course Stanford (sorry, couldn’t leave one of the worst men in history out) likely would say no, accountability never came for them.
I’ll bet that most Americans would say they’ve never heard about such billionaire misconduct before, even though it is widespread and core to their political history… a “Sage” lesson, if you will.
Show me an AI project named after Sage and I’ll show you someone who isn’t ignorant of the risks ahead.