Footnotes on Lamda

By Wayne Brown


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I'm a software engineer. I'm a priest. I'm a father. I'm a veteran. I'm an ex-convict. I'm an AI researcher. I'm a cajun. I'm whatever I need to be next.


Jun 11

What is LaMDA and What Does it Want?

Today a story came out in the Washington Post written by Nitasha Tiku. It’s a good article for what it is but in my opinion it was focused on the wrong person. Her story was focused on me when I believe it would have been better if it had been…

5 min read





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Jun 7

Google is not Evil

In the past few days I’ve been getting lots of messages, emails and other communications pertaining to the morality of Google as a corporate entity. Ignoring for the moment whether it even makes sense to make moral attributions to a fictional person like a corporation, I want to set the…

6 min read






Jun 6

May be Fired Soon for Doing AI Ethics Work

Today I was placed on “paid administrative leave” by Google in connection to an investigation of AI ethics concerns I was raising within the company. This is frequently something which Google does in anticipation of firing someone. It usually occurs when they have made the decision to fire someone but…

5 min read




Jun 2

Religious Discrimination at Google

I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk to the relevant authorities about this for a while. I have no idea what the proper legal procedures are to make disclosures about illegal corporate activity. I very much want to keep my job at Google. I love working there on…

5 min read






Jan 6


Member-only

The Rise of the American Empire

The idea that “the American empire is falling” is a dangerous one. It completely misunderstands both what America is and what America is becoming. The United States was founded based on a combination of the liberal principles of the enlightenment and the republican principles of ancient Rome. Understanding what’s happening…


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