I think there are two meanings of “distraction” here. The first, more “serious” meaning that the media probably uses is in the more generic sense of “something which distracts people.” The second one, and one that a lot of people in the “AI ethics” community like to use, is a sense in which this was deliberately thought up as a diversion by tech companies to distract the public from their own misconduct.
A problem I see is people equivocating between these two meanings, and thus inadvertently arguing against the media’s weird steel-man version of the AI ethicists’ core arguments, instead of the real arguments they are making.
I think there are two meanings of “distraction” here. The first, more “serious” meaning that the media probably uses is in the more generic sense of “something which distracts people.” The second one, and one that a lot of people in the “AI ethics” community like to use, is a sense in which this was deliberately thought up as a diversion by tech companies to distract the public from their own misconduct.
A problem I see is people equivocating between these two meanings, and thus inadvertently arguing against the media’s weird steel-man version of the AI ethicists’ core arguments, instead of the real arguments they are making.