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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

#521

Post by briandear »

chrischen wrote: post #291
alistairSH wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does encryption being classified as munitions also put it into second amendment territory? It doesn't much matter. Even if somebody made the case that "crypto is a form of 'Arms', subject to 2A protection," the 2A doesn't grant an unregulated right to own whatever "arms" one chooses. All the rights granted by the Constitution are subject to reasonable regulation. So, Congress could simply legislate a restriction on c…

It could be argued that the 2nd amendment was put in place to ensure a means of the citizenry to overthrow the government (as an absolute check on an unjust government). Unfortunately it's now just a vestige of an older time and the 2nd amendment only serves to protect the rights of gun hobbyists. The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military, and the modern arms su…

380 million Americans, 2 million members of the military.

Unless the US were to nuke itself, given the geography, a motivated citizenry could easily take on the US military. Not a scenario I want to imagine, but the US military has troubles in Afghanistan and Iraq — imagine that kind of conflict in the US. Just look at rebels in Syria to see this on a smaller scale.

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

#522

Post by lifeformed »

MikkoFinell wrote: post #372
sseth wrote: post #135

Do we really want to test a theory that we can have a repeat of the 1930s when the democracies fell far behind an autocratic regime in the arms race, and again the autocratic regimes will not win? Democracies are in retreat around the world, and I only hope we wake up before it is too late. The military-industrial complex may have become far bigger and perhaps in some ways a burden, but the world is a dangerous place…

The world is currently the least dangerous it's ever been in history, and all data and all trends point that it will be even less dangerous in the future. Sorry but you're simply wrong.

Different metrics. I think you're referring to crime rates and health, but OP is referring to political instability.

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

#523

Post by ImSkeptical »

gfo wrote: post #391
GiorgioG wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense. If that's the case, I don't want to live anywhere else. If someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night, they pose a deadly threat to my family. In what country would you not feel the same way? > Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state. Not all states are benevolent, nor a…

Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life? Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.

They may just be there to take my stuff. They may be there to do far worse. Why should I risk my life, and the life of my family, on the restraint and kindness of burglars?

I don't even agree that I should have to let burglars take my things. If I want to stop them why should their greed put my well-being at risk?

Gun owners do believe they can overthrow the government, or at the very least that guns would be useful if that had to happen. A lot of anti-gun folks like to use this like of argument, but I don't think they are really thinking clearly. If I had to violently overthrow the government it would not look like getting together with a group of like minded friends and marching on Washington to be killed by all manner of military hardware. It would look like taking potshots at patrolling soldiers to demoralize them, attacking mid level government bureaucrats when they are at home or unprotected in order to damage the government internally and dissuade people from working for it, or luring police into ambushes to make them hesitate to enforce the law. Imagine what harm a few motivated people with rifles might do. Now multiply that by a thousand. Now multiply that by a thousand.

The government would break under the strain. That doesn't mean that revolutionaries would take DC and occupy the Whitehouse, though they might after years or decades, but it does mean the government would give up tyranny.

An armed populace ensures the government has the consent of the people. Anything else is tyranny, even if your tyrants are treating you alright now.

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

#524

Post by manofstick »

dilippkumar wrote: post #499
rebuilder wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a single right that exists inherently. Where does such a right originate? For every right that most people hold evident, you'll find people who disagree. This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.

> I can't think of a single right that exists inherently. Where does such a right originate? The US was built upon the idea that rights are inherent and not granted to citizens by a government. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Which was exactly what the parent had said. i.e.

> This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.

Which is what the US Constitution is. (Just because the say "We hold these truths to be self-evident" doesn't mean that they are)

Mind blown huh?

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

#525

Post by briandear »

garmaine wrote: post #436
treebeard901 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classification of cryptography as munitions was an interesting choice. The first amendment may protect domestic encryption capabilities as stated by the wikipedia article. From a legal standpoint, does encryption being classified as munitions also put it into second amendment territory? As information becomes weaponized, it's an interesting thought. The first amendment is arguably more vulnerable these days, so I…

Nuclear weapons are munitions. A U235 bomb like Hiroshima’s is technically a gun even. Do you have a right to carry one of those?

If you can carry a Hiroshima bomb, I’m ok with letting you.

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

#526

Post by fwip »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #401
icebraining wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. The obvious reply is: great, then we're not needed, let someone else do it!

This way you end up with someone unskilled taking a job and instead of 1 drone you have to send 10 because only 1 will hit the target.

If our war machine kills less people, sounds like a win to me.

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

#527

Post by VikingCoder »

Myrmornis wrote: post #520
VikingCoder wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to have that conversation with them? Because some of them are right here. In fact some of them just got shot at yesterday. Is it hyperbole, or do you honestly feel that trying to connect users with products they might like is inherently unconscionable?

Yes, it's inherently tasteless and makes the world a worse place. No-one needs or wants the "help" of advertisers providing suggestions about what products they might want to buy.

Even when you're searching for that product?

Out of morbid curiosity, do you get that ads fund most of the internet?

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

#528

Post by friedman23 »

geofft wrote: post #445
mhneu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The West since 1950 has done FAR MORE scientific research than the USSR did. Soviet scientists did good work and were smart. But the Western Enlightenment model -- open communication, tolerance of dissenting voices, pursuit of truth and rejection of propaganda, and funding for basic science -- was a huge shining scientific success over the past century. Its success dwarfed that of other models. (Today the biggest…

I don't know that the causal link between the West's scientific output and the West's enlightenment values is that clear. It's certainly correlated. But the reason the US was able to do so much fundamental research in the 20th century is not (just) because the US culturally valued fundamental research - it's because the US was able to get popular support for taxing people and spending it on the war effort (both the W…

>But the reason the US was able to do so much fundamental research in the 20th century is not (just) because the US culturally valued fundamental research - it's because the US was able to get popular support for taxing people and spending it on the war effort (both the World Wars and the Cold War) and decided that fundamental research was necessary for the war effort.

Are you implying that the USSR spent a smaller percentage of tax revenue on the war effort?

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

#529

Post by jbros »

friedman23 wrote: post #89
geofft wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without defending the morality of the Hitler/Stalin/Mao governments (or of the US government), it's very much worth noting that scientific researched flourished in the USSR and technological research continues to flourish in China. A lot of discoveries in computer science had roughly simultaneous Soviet / US discovery (the Cook-Levin theorem is a good example). There are a huge number of technology companies in China…

haha, USSR research flourished? Do you mean how the USSR crushed any research into computing because it contradicted their ideology? And "Chinese chips" are all foreign designs.

It seems like their we're ideological reasons at first. But you are leaving out crucial details afterwards.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_...

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

#530

Post by VikingCoder »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #518
VikingCoder wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to have that conversation with them? Because some of them are right here. In fact some of them just got shot at yesterday. Is it hyperbole, or do you honestly feel that trying to connect users with products they might like is inherently unconscionable?

> trying to connect users with products they might like It is delusional to suggest that this is the goal of ad-tech. The only people thinking about the users and the products are the creative teams that make the ads themselves. Ad-tech, on the other hand, engages in dragnet data mining operations that serve the creative/design teams at ad agencies. The way the ad-tech industry has decided to go about things absolute…

Do you know anyone who works on ad-tech?

Or are you making uninformed hyperbolic statements?

> The unrestrained nonsense they've unleashed on the web over the past two decades

I feel sometimes like I'm the only one who remembers how awful, insulting, and dangerous ads were before.

> But how do you know what the people at YouTube HQ did for a living? Do you have insider information? By all means, don't hold back.

I asked, "You want to have that conversation with them?"

I'll ask you the same thing.

You know some of them are here.

They're your peers.

But feel free to demonize them without talking to them.

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