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

nytimes.com

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

#101

Post by criley2 »

tclancy wrote: post #34
criley2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

The Tartars are over the hills. Democracy is in decline. Authoritarianism is on the mega-rise. The state of democracy is bad and looking worse, and if the Brexit/Trump trend of destroying the EU and breaking up the Atlantic Alliance bear just a bit more fruit, you may find that these "Tartars" are a lot closer to you than you once believed.

You call me blind to the future by looking at the past, but quite frankly, you appear to be repeating the mistakes of the past by not learning from them.

Democracy was not "won". Liberty for all does not exist.

These are fights that every generation must wage.

Or we will (and are currently) losing.

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

#102

Post by ocdtrekkie »

linuxftw wrote: post #85

> Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project That moment when you realize your mega-corp employer's "culture" is merely just another tool to get your to do their bidding. How do the share holders feel? I'm sure they're betting that almost every employee will stay no matter how their technology is used.

Indeed, they know few to none of these petitioners will quit. 3,000 petition signatures will do nothing. 3,000 resignations would, but Googlers aren't going to pass up on the high paychecks, three five-star meals a day, and massages in the office based on moral grounds.

(In the same vein, Google's NetPAC has been quietly donating the max to Republicans like Paul Ryan and Steve Scalise, while most of their engineers openly oppose them.)

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

#103

Post by rb808 »

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…

Steve Blank talks a lot about this history of Silicon Valley and how most of the original technology scene was started by DoD projects.

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

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

#104

Post by Gargoyle »

tzakrajs wrote: post #6
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 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.

Do Google employees actually believe this?

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

#105

Post by goatlover »

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…

They didn't step up to Stalin and Mao. Hitler was because of alliance with Britain and the Japanese attack, not because of how awful the Nazis regime was. The US for the most part didn't want to get dragged back into another European conflict. Hitler was bad, yes. But what happened in Germany was rooted in the outcome of WW1, which was rooted in all the alliances and what not proceeding it, which was rooting in yet prior conflicts. A lot of which had to do with the colonial powers fighting over how to divide up the world, or because of religious differences.

A pacifist might say Hitler, Stalin and Mao are just symptoms of the deeper problem, which is the willingness of human beings to engage in violent conflicts just because somebody tells them to.

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

#106

Post by mkirklions »

komali2 wrote: post #49
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…

I hear you, and I want to make a "times change" argument. This is my perspective, because I read too much scifi: I can conceive of a couple possibilities in 300 years. 1. Humanity is gone or stone-aged. Either because it failed to colonize before being wiped out by disease, because it nuked itself, or because it implemented AI in a way that got itself killed. 2. Humanity has turned peaceful, formed a global community…

I worry that culture doesnt help at the top of leadership.

Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you.

Dictators dont care if war is unpopular as long as its beneficial.

I think nukes may be obsolete because war is no longer beneficial, but leadership of a company may be 100% set on finding AI by any means necessary.

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

#107

Post by jadedhacker »

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…

Military funding is used as a slight of hand. The legislature scares the public, the public hands over money, and then the military is used to invest the money in long term goals to build a future technological society that the private sector is wholly unwilling to do because of short term profit focus.

This also has the benefit of getting war averse liberals to say nice things about the large standing army and bloody foreign interventions of the US empire, most of which have failed to produce anything other than blowback and civil war across the globe.

https://archive.org/details/NoamChomsky-ScienceMilitaryFundi...

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

#108

Post by tlb »

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…

A large fraction of the world's best engineers don't want to be associated with military projects. So companies have a choice to hire them and not do military projects, or not hire them and do them.

When I was running a robot company, I made the decision to not do military projects (mostly for personal reasons) and it helped me hire some great people that I couldn't have otherwise.

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

#109

Post by ocdtrekkie »

s3r3nity wrote: post #86
tzakrajs wrote: 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.

Didn't Google drop its "Don't be evil" motto a few years ago?

No, this is a common misconception. Google still has "Don't be evil", but Alphabet also now has "Do the right thing". Both are hilarious in the context of what Google actually does.

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

#110

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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.

You should understand that building basically anything will further the goal of some military over another.

Technology is neutral - who it's used by and how is not.

I don't care what you build, if it has the goal of improving a workflow or automating a process then it will de-facto support one organization over another.

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