Google started several decades with a notable "don't be evil" catchphrase. Those days are long gone, and if there were any doubt, it has been removed withe the latest "updates to our AI Principles" on AI.Google. The turning point - there for anyone to see - can when Google went public in 2004. At that point, they assumed a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders that overrules any concerns they may have had about ethics. This is to my mind a built-in structural defect in the constitution of corporations, setting them as active agents contrary to the social good any time there is money to be made undermining it. Russia's war against Ukrain may have been the inflection point here, but it's a development that was inevitable given how corporations are governed. So is - not surprisingly - their deeper and deeper influence over government.
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