Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by danesparza » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

rahulmehta95 wrote: post #14

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…

My memory isn't short.

You made a point of talking about cryptography. The US government also classified crypto as munitions in order to control its usage and export: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

This had very negative effects on cryptography in general (see the FREAK exploit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK )

Also, why wouldn't this be employed to better monitor Stingray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker) systems?

I don't think the government (and specifically, the military) should be viewed as a non-partisan actor when it comes to technology.

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

#32

Post by airstrike » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

sigi45 wrote: post #23

rahulmehta95 wrote: post #14

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.

Citation needed

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

#33

Post by GiorgioG » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

Google is a huge company, turning down big money from the US Gov't for legal purposes is probably not a realistic option (at what point would shareholders sue if they turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue?)

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

#34

Post by tclancy » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #28

robert_foss wrote: post #22

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 ulti…

That's a fair point but it also treats life as a zero sum game that's played in a steady-state arena where the threat of Tartars over the next hill is ever present. That's a good way to prevent progress and to defend yourself perfectly against the Last War but one would think the last 30 years of terrorism would have shown us the flaw in that.

Put another way: who benefits from $Giant_New_Military_Platform like new fighter planes? They don't really keep me safe as a citizen of the US: they don't prevent terrorists and they don't threaten other thermonuclear states. Yet we spend trillions on stuff like this any justify it with bellicose rhetoric and it seems like the only people benefiting from it are people selling it.

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

#35

Post by jimmaswell » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #21

jryan49 wrote: 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?

I don't think the marginal cost of these things has been that much of a consideration in the past.

Less American military personnel will be put in harm's way as technology like this advances. Maybe wars will even be mostly unmanned remotely controlled machine-vs-machine in the future.

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

#36

Post by zython » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

rahulmehta95 wrote: post #14

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…

there is no inherent reason that these technologies need to be developed by the military, they could just as well be developed for civilian use when given the funding.

also it is not surprising that these things are invented by the dod when you're spending ~600-700 bilion a year on warfare and intelligence operations.

That last sentence of yours rubs me kinda the wrong way; that is a dangerious premise that could set us back ~30 years when the cold war and the arms race was well and alive, but this time we'd have robots and AI

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

#37

Post by airstrike » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

vowelless wrote: post #3

On one hand, I reluctantly appreciate Trump's election because it will force silicon valley to think many times before readily giving up user privacy to the US government. I felt like the attitude was very lax under Obama (despite the Snowden revelations). On the other hand, this bothers me a bit because it continues to allow people in the valley to maintain a (sorry to use this word) delusion that what they are doin…

Being “mindful of their actions” doesn’t necessarily mean they are doing the right thing. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I don’t really get why anyone would want drones to be less accurate, but maybe that just means I’m just a no-good warmongering fool, right?

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

#38

Post by vasco » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

rahulmehta95 wrote: post #14

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…

One thing is acknowledging that if you pour lots of money into getting better at anything (space exploration, waging war, etc) you'll get cool technological advances applicable in other areas.

Another thing is to specifically choose to dedicate resources to one of those areas instead of another area. Why can't google bid on AI projects for better detection of geological landmarks in other planets? (which I'm guessing is a similar endeavor to what the article mentions - and already has ongoing research)

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

#39

Post by pvg » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

sqdbps wrote: 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 should stop hiring activists

Google hasn't been doing that, ever. That's really the point of the story - the agency of the people who work at Google.

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

#40

Post by sdhgaiojfsa » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #28

robert_foss wrote: post #22

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 ulti…

For many, the current actions of our military weigh much more heavily than good things it did half a century or more ago. Of course, each person's morality is their own, so you may feel that working in favor of the military is justified by its past actions. For others, they see working for the military as enabling bad present and future actions, and therefore see it as immoral to offer support.