241–250 of 1001 posts
Serious question for those who agree with this petition. Which country's military would you like to see be the most technologically advanced in 20 years?
Nukes are enough to stop any war from happening between any of the most powerful countries in the world.
What else do we even need?
The various factions in the various civil wars around the world can kill themselves in their own war, and we shouldn't be a part of it killing even more people.
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?)
A petition by 3000 employees (or, to be honest, 30) is enough to claim that it was in the company's interest to forgo this revenue to improve their standing among potential hires. Remember that tech companies live and die by the quality of their workforce.
Moreover, the idea that companies always have to act according to strict profit motivations is a myth. Just look at the billions corporations spend each year on charitable causes.
Yes, you could claim that these donations are done for PR purposes. But that would render your argument meaningless, because I can reframe any such altruistic actions in terms of PR. I have also personally witnessed many decisions that cost money but served some greater good and were never publicised.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just imagine if we stopped spending on defense in the 80s when the cold war ended and we had to deal with today's Russia with decades old technology
We aren't going to go to war with Russia, despite the propaganda that everyone is spreading. Wars between nuclear countries don't happen any more.
The reason it's impossible to win a war against the current US military is because the US has spent an obscene amount of money building it for decades.
If the US military were not capable of defending Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics would be under Russian rule today.
>"...that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes." These drone strikes have been happening for decades without interpretive AI, and they will probably continue with or without. So let's make the strikes more precise and save more civilians. >"But improved analysis of drone video could be used to pick out human targets for strikes, while also…
The need for human operators to identify targets serves as a hard logistical limit to how many drone strikes can be delivered. Turning them into a machine removes that limit. Suppose you decrease error rate by 10% (optimistic), but increase volume by 20% (probably underestimated). You'll get an 8% increase in innocent deaths.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US was motivated by ideology. Why was the US an ally of GB/France/etc and not Germany/Italy? Contrary to your belief, greed can be ideological -- striving for global free trade is an example of this.
Then why wasn't the US in the war from the beginning? Did it take 2 years to discover that Hitler was bad?
Also, the US formally joined the war in 1941, but were providing material support to the Allies and otherwise prepping before then.
It boggles my mind, with the current state of affairs, the number of people actively organizing to eliminate or curtail our fundamental human rights. It seems to me that 1st and 2nd amendment rights are both under particularly intense bombardment these days.
I'm not sure if you meant to imply that the 2nd amendment is a fundamental human right but if so I think that's a bit of a stretch. 'Fundamental rights' (under US law) I think is defensible as fundamental is treated as an alias for constitutional so guns are in. 'Fundamental human rights' to me implies broad and fundamental applicability, i.e. the UN declarations and covenants on human rights, which don't iterate gun…
My feeling is that people have a right to self defense, which would require them to have access to some effective weapon. In theory that could be a club or blade rather than a firearm; however, currently firearms are the only (somewhat) socially acceptable weapon to carry in the united states.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US was motivated by ideology. Why was the US an ally of GB/France/etc and not Germany/Italy? Contrary to your belief, greed can be ideological -- striving for global free trade is an example of this.
Then why wasn't the US in the war from the beginning? Did it take 2 years to discover that Hitler was bad?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Democracies are in retreat around the world, and I only hope we wake up before it is too late. What are you advocating? Arming governments with autonomous killer drones in order to "protect democracy"? Because the world is a "dangerous place"? I don't even...
Well "governments" already have nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, drones and what have you. It's not some new concept. You can take it as given that regimes you will never want to live under will be putting their best people in using AI for military purposes. It's dangerous to imagine one is sitting on some moral high ground by refusing to work for the military. We all owe our freedom to previous generations of scien…
Nukes prevent any war from happening between any powerful nation.
The only use for the other types of weapons is to participate in some other civil war in another country that we shouldn't be in.
So no, I don't care if we "fall behind" because we still have nukes and those are enough to protect us in the conflicts that matter.
I for one would rather have a drone strike program that actually actively avoids civilian casualties as much as possible. There are certainly gray areas here as far as the use of that program from a political standpoint (whether the strikes are warranted or whether it is part of regime changes). On the other hand, by not helping the military become more efficient we also risk losing existing lives (our own and civili…