That story is from the magazine The Spectator right? According to Wikipedia "The Spectator is politically conservative and supports the Conservative Party" .
Being openly "conservative" means biased. Although they are entitled to their opinions it is good to be aware that they have a (conservative) bias. They do not try to be objective, they try to be conservative.
And what is "conservative bias"? It of course means conserving the status quo, conserving the power of the rich and powerful, conserving inequality. That kind of thing is what I think ethicists should be studying.
Note that to the conservatives, since by default they want to conserve things, don't want change, they don't want ethicists snooping around asking questions about what if anything might be unethical about the existing power-structures. No Sir :-)
So it seems to me that for a conservative magazine to criticize "ethicists" is very self-serving for them.
Bias is natural and inevitable, and it has to be acknowledged in research. The problem is, liberals want to shut down anyone who disagrees with their own bias. It's not about 'snooping around asking questions', but more like slandering and aggressively silencing people for having a different opinion.
You'd think it would never affect you as a liberal but it was funny to watch Google's very progressive & liberal research leads labeled 'racists', and evil incarnates for standing in the way of the activist mob. I mean they're are still trying to 'cancel' Jeff Dean, of all people, for firing some activist [1], and Nando de Freitas for merely supporting both sides[2].
If this is your ethics discourse, I'd rather AI be unethical.
I think what' you're saying is that some people who claim to be ethical are not. That may often be so. Just because people say something, does not necessarily mean it is so. But I think "ethical" by definition means what is good for us all
Being openly "conservative" means biased. Although they are entitled to their opinions it is good to be aware that they have a (conservative) bias. They do not try to be objective, they try to be conservative.
And what is "conservative bias"? It of course means conserving the status quo, conserving the power of the rich and powerful, conserving inequality. That kind of thing is what I think ethicists should be studying.
Note that to the conservatives, since by default they want to conserve things, don't want change, they don't want ethicists snooping around asking questions about what if anything might be unethical about the existing power-structures. No Sir :-)
So it seems to me that for a conservative magazine to criticize "ethicists" is very self-serving for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spectator