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Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

nytimes.com

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#21
post #4

Maybe if they were more accurate they would kill less people?

Maybe if they're more accurate the marginal cost of killing people in other parts of the world will go down even more so we'll be even less likely to reflect on whether the fact we can easily use robots to kill people on the other side of the world who have no way of responding symmetrically might come back to bite us in the ass?

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#23

This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research sh…

It still is. It is not necessary for world peace to help the Pentagon to build better killing machines.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#24

This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research sh…

Idealists on the left would apparently prefer China getting a complete monopoly on military AI and expanding their dictatorship globally instead of being pragmatic.

Reminder, if you work in tech you are collecting blood money because everything we use was initially funded by the military for military application. If you are going to attack Google for this and don't leave the industry you are a hypocrite

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#25
post #18
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google won't take a defense contract and has shed defense projects in the past" was a common theme at Google. Recruiters and employees actively advertised this as a feature of Google's not being evil.

They should stop doing that. I mean who's stopping China from using AI powered military robots? they should think about the bigger picture. Also I think they should invoke AI powered military robots in recruiting, what's cooler than that?!

"Don't say that he's hypocritical

Rather say that he's apolitical

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That's not my department, says says Werner von Braun"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#26
post #2

"As Google defends its contracts from internal dissent, its competitors have not been shy about publicizing their own work on defense projects. Amazon touts its image recognition work with the Department of Defense, and Microsoft has promoted the fact that its cloud technology won a contract to handle classified information for every branch of the military and defense agencies." Google should stop hiring activists an…

Google is used by individuals whereas AWS and MS are predominantly the clients of industry, who are much less activist and much more pragmatic.

Funny, I thought the "A" in AWS stands for Amazon where I as an individual bought a thing recently using my MS Windows powered PC, again as an individual.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#27
post #2

"As Google defends its contracts from internal dissent, its competitors have not been shy about publicizing their own work on defense projects. Amazon touts its image recognition work with the Department of Defense, and Microsoft has promoted the fact that its cloud technology won a contract to handle classified information for every branch of the military and defense agencies." Google should stop hiring activists an…

It makes you an activist to not want to work on certain projects because you disagree with them?

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#28

As an engineer I have serious moral qualms about furthering the goals of any military. Contributing means being complicit. The fact that the military funds research doesn't change that.

As an engineer I have serious moral qualms about not furthering the goals of our military.

After all, I would not be here, and my job would not exist, and the freedom I have to do this work would not exist, if soldiers like my grandfather hadn't stepped up to Hitler and Stalin and Mao and say "No, you're wrong, and we're willing to use violence to protect our way of life". Just my 2c but I definitely respect the ultimate sacrifice that my grandparents generation gave to create this quite nifty Liberty bubble that these few generations get to play in.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#29

This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research sh…

>the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography

For the purposes of being better at waging war. I am not disagreeing with your statement, but I think leaving out the reason why is treating the military like it's "NASA with a few guns laying around" and implying that one can work on weapons systems without having any moral culpability for how they are used.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#30

This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research sh…

Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else.

I think DoD/Pentagon put up the funding for what later became Google maps. Not to mention the GPS constellation we all enjoy using.

Its a shame progress has to be made through these channels but it has proved very effective in the past.

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