And then there were four...

The conga line of tech companies whose employees have better ethics than their CEOs just got a little longer:

Protests from within the technology industry continue as hundreds of employees at Salesforce have requested that the company’s leadership reassess its work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) following reports that authorities have separated thousands of children from their parents at the U.S–Mexico border.

In a letter addressed to Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder and CEO, the employees argue that, by providing CBP with a number of its products, the company is potentially abandoning its core values and making employees “complicit in the inhumane treatment of vulnerable people.”

“We are particularly concerned about the use of Service Cloud to manage border activities,” the letter, sent to Benioff on Monday, reads. “Given the inhumane separation of children from their parents currently taking place at the border, we believe that our core value of Equality is at stake and that Salesforce should re-examine our contractual relationship with CBP and speak out against its practices.”

Salesforce are obviously not giants like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, but it may be just as significant that Salesforce employees are following in the ethically conscious footsteps of their colleagues from larger firms. The Silicon Valley ethos of disrupting now, and only worrying about the consequences later (if ever) may be shifting to one where the ethical considerations inherent in these tech companies' practices are one of their employees foremost concerns.

If so, it's a long overdue development. Technology isn't just a collection of devices; it all impacts human beings at some point, and that human impact needs to be factored into the designs. All too often, though, it hasn't been, which is how Uber and Theranos happened. If we're starting to see the kind of sea change that will make the next Theranos less likely, then that can only be a good thing.

Also, the intersection of ethics, politics, and tech? It's not stopping anytime soon.

Uber apologizes to London while giving Quebec the finger

Only Uber can go from this:

In a letter of apology to Londoners on Monday, Uber’s new chief executive moved to repair his company’s reputation after the city’s transport authority said it would scrap the ride-hailing service’s operating license.

Dara Khosrowshahi issued a letter to London's Evening Standard newspaper acknowledging that the San Francisco company “got things wrong along the way” as it expanded. He said the company will appeal the London decision but will do so “with the knowledge that we must also change.”

“We won't be perfect, but we will listen to you; we will look to be long-term partners with the cities we serve; and we will run our business with humility, integrity and passion,” he wrote.

to this:

On Tuesday, Uber Quebec's director general Jean-Nicolas Guillemette announced that the company is leaving the provinceon October 14, citing too-tough regulations there. The planned move was first reported by the CBC and confirmed by Uber on Tuesday. Several days before the company's announcement, it had warned that new rules proposed by the provincial Ministry of Transportation would force Uber to exit Quebec. Uber has a history of threatening Quebec lawmakers with leaving if the company's policy demands aren't met, but has only now followed through.

By all accounts, Quebec has been reasonable with Uber, especially considering that the city of London in the UK just banned the company entirely for not being a "fit and proper" taxi service. (Uber plans to contest the London ban.) Although Quebec has faced consistent pressure from taxi companies to regulate Uber like a traditional taxi firm, the province has declined to do so. Instead, last year the province granted Uber a temporary license to operate as part of a pilot project.

in only 24 hours. [Excerpts from the LA Times and Motherboard, respectively.]

Uber's new CEO is going to try to convince you that they've changed; that they've reformed, or learned the errors of their prior ways, or discovered the value of the communities that they're attempting to invade, but it's 99% horse shit. Seriously, it's almost pure manure; or pure PR, which is the same thing. Don't be fooled.

This is what a transformative technology looks like

From TechCrunch:

Beginning today, a select group of Pittsburgh Uber users will get a surprise the next time they request a pickup: the option to ride in a self driving car.

The announcement comes a year-and-a-half after Uber hired dozens of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics center to develop the technology.

Uber gave a few members of the press a sneak peek Tuesday when a fleet of 14 Ford Fusions equipped with radar, cameras and other sensing equipment pulled up to Uber’s Advanced Technologies Campus (ATC) northeast of downtown Pittsburgh.

During my 45-minute ride across the city, it became clear that this is not a bid at launching the first fully formed autonomous cars. Instead, this is a research exercise. Uber wants to learn and refine how self driving cars act in the real world. That includes how the cars react to passengers — and how passengers react to them.

“How do drivers in cars next to us react to us? How do passengers who get into the backseat who are experiencing our hardware and software fully experience it for the first time, and what does that really mean?” said Raffi Krikorian, director of Uber ATC.

If they are anything like me, they will respond with fascination followed by boredom.

Driver error kills thousands of people every year in the U.S. alone, so self-driving cars don't have to be perfect in order to make our roads much, much safer -- they just have to be better than us. And here's the thing: they're already better than us. The hurdles to getting self-driving autos on the road aren't technological -- the technology already exists, and it already works well enough to be an enormous improvement over the status quo.

No, the real hurdles to adoption of this technology are cultural -- matters of public perception, and the influence that perception can have on the politicians who will be called on to modify existing laws in order to allow fully autonomous vehicles to be rolled out in large numbers.