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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

#881

Post by darawk »

marricks wrote: post #701
darawk wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they made some bad choices, and then they corrected them. They also funded the research that created the field. Things can be morally mixed. On balance though, the US military funding for cryptography has been pretty clearly a good thing.

I love how any defense of US military history often boils down to, “sure they did terrible things in the past, but we definitely learned from them.” I’m sure people have been saying that for decades if not centuries. Terrible things just get declassified slowly so we only learn about them later.

You realize that the US military is the reason the world isn't ruled by Hitler and/or Stalin, right?

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

#882

Post by sseth »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #610

I wonder what Geoff Hinton's position on this is. He seems somewhat anti-military from some side comments in his Neural Networks course.

I remember reading that when DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014, they made it a precondition that an ethics committee be set up to review use of AI, and Google did back out of some projects because of it.

In this case what they seem to be doing is allowing the military to use some of the AI tools on Google cloud which are also available for general use. This is a much grayer area - it is one thing to not develop something specifically for the military, it is another to say that we will not provide the military something we provide to the general public.

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

#883

Post by hulahoof »

titzer wrote: post #182
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…

Well the project "uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes." That's a direct application of tech to killing people, not some abstract network or compiler tech. There's a big difference.

The flip side is better targeting should result in less collateral deaths

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

#884

Post by bb88 »

deft wrote: post #781
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"One man was responsible for helping save tens of thousands of lives. Another man helped kill millions." In the case of Fritz Haber, it's the same man who saved billions from hunger and killed millions by prolonging World War-I. Excellent article on the same - https://medium.com/the-mission/the-tragedy-of-fritz-haber-th... Sometimes, the decision isn't clear as black & white; especially when you mix nationalism & pa…

That's totally different. He chose to kill the people and did it intentionally out of hate / pride for his country. This thread and the posted link are discussing whether something is immoral or not. He knew it would kill a ton of people and designed it to on purpose. That situation is totally black and white. Mass intentional killing is wrong, pretty much everyone agrees with that.

> Mass intentional killing is wrong, pretty much everyone agrees with that.

In shooting war, both sides have already ceded that killing people is morally justified.

And now you're in the unenviable position arguing about how much death is too much, and what are the proper ways to kill people in a war setting.

And then you get asked moral dilemmas if killing 100,000 people is okay if it saves 1,000,000 people from dying further. This is the Hiroshima/Nagasaki question in a nutshell.

I don't know that answer, but then I didn't fight a brutal war for four years, watching my friends, family, and countrymen die at the hands of a brutal regime.

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

#885

Post by whiskers08xmt »

guelo wrote: post #693
grellas wrote: post #533

Where does one draw a line these days among the personal, the moral, the legal, and the political? The military application in question is legal and is approved by a duly elected government that supports it politically. In earlier days, employees generally would see this as just doing their jobs in developing technology that their employers wanted developed and would not concern themselves about ultimate uses and app…

We used to have a moral military, we championed the banning of weapons such as gas, bio, nuclear, mines, etc and we established international institutions and protocols to stop their spread. At some point we turned evil and have been destroying the foundations of international cooperation that we built and are building and spreading new categories of weapons without concern or moral debate. We are the bad guys now. W…

The US has never signed the Ottawa treaty, banning the use of land mines. The US do however claim to abide by it, outside of the Korean peninsula. The US never signed the treaty on cluster munitions either, which have many of the same humanitarian issues that mines possess.

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

#886

Post by gaius »

jstanley wrote: post #784
killjoywashere wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. As consequentialist first move, let me suggest that a first order principle for the US military is "Sweat now or bleed later". Better to work your ass off to develop superior tactics, discipline, and technology now than die later. No one hates war more than soldiers.

If soldiers hate war so much why do they join up?

Possibly because the one thing worse than war is being invaded, history has shown that

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

#887

Post by jwillmer »

As someone who is hesitant of using (free) cloud services there you pay with your information I really like that there are some thoughtful and aware people working at Google. If it turns out that they have the power to affect decisions like this in there company I might choose to use more Google products.

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

#888

Post by thecrazyone »

fredsted wrote: post #853
gpm wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asking how fertilizer can be weaponized? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing

I don't think he is

Not OP, but a fertilizer is a reasonable embodiment of something that turns desert soil into something in which plants can grow

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

#889

Post by reacweb »

cmontella wrote: post #761
betolink wrote: post #731

From the movie "Flash of Genius" about Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper: "I can't think of a job or a career where the understanding of ethics is more important than engineering," Dr. Kearns continues. "Who designed the artificial aortic heart valve? An engineer did that. Who designed the gas chambers at Auschwitz? An engineer did that, too. One man was responsible for helping save ten…

As a roboticist at the beginning of my career working on drones, I decided then and there that I would never make "bombs", a metaphor I used to mean anything that could be weaponized. I realized a lot of the work I was doing was funded by DARPA, and I was very cognizant about my research being used in this way. And like Dr. Kearns suggests, it's not entirely black and white. Would my path planning algorithm be used t…

If all the engineers who have a sense of ethic refuse to work for military projects, it implies that military projects will be performed by less ethical than average people. It is frightening. IMHO, avoiding military projects because of ethic is counterproductive.

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

#890

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

ByThyGrace wrote: post #815
mrlala wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? The killer drones couldn't communicate without said network protocols.

The point being that "killer drones" are by sole purpose immoral. You can hardly find a humanitarian use for them, while network protocols are pretty much amoral. You can use them for bad, but also for good. Please excuse my manichaeism.

Technology is often of dual use - one mans killer drone is another mans life saver. A similar device could be used to get injured people out of harms way, or to deliver aid/medicine/whatever.
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