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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

#891

Post by flamedoge »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #776
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…

> incredibly valid for Silicon Valley engineers these days If one could engineer a solution to save lives, but instead uses his/her talents to build the nth iteration of, say, a food delivery app, does he/she bear any ethical culpability? Because it seems the bigger challenge for engineers is not avoiding overt evil, but in the opportunity cost of spending their time on work of significantly lesser consequence than t…

Engineers, like most human beings, are free to waste their talent. It wouldn't be nice to demand some kind of moral responsibility from engineers just because they can do more. How they live would be up to them, and free market solution would be far better terms under which they would be convinced to do more.

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

#892

Post by dx034 »

drtz wrote: post #772
abalone wrote: post #195

I completely support the employees but it is criminal that this NYT article does not mention the extensive roots of Silicon Valley in Pentagon funding. SV as a whole is substantially a creation of military spending. Just recently in the AI space: - Siri was spun out of a Pentagon project -- look up SRI International and CALO. Its purpose: a "soldier’s servant".[1] - Autonomous driving is a direct evolution of Pentago…

Nazis gave us Volkswagen. I don't have to support Nazis to own a Porsche in 2018.

Because no part of the product was developed during that time. Just the root of the parent company is from that time. For SV it's different. The product itself was funded by the military.

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

#893

Post by chrisseaton »

kiliantics wrote: post #705
chrisseaton wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A union at Google could threaten to effectively halt all institutional operations of governments or other companies in order to influence their actions. But this seems an amoral thing to do, to me! A small group of unelected, unaccountable and non-diverse people abusing their relative power to try to force a democratically elected government or private company to do something? Why would anyone want that?

Currently, Google and other large companies already do have power and influence over what the government does. But only a tiny portion of people at these companies are the ones deciding what to do with that power. It would be preferable if the entire company took part in deciding how it would influence what the government does. It would be even more preferable if workers across whole industries and whole sections of…

> It would be even more preferable if workers across whole industries and whole sections of society together used their collective power to influence what the government can do.

Everyone in society is already part of one big union that can influence government - the electorate. Everyone gets one vote. If you try to force the government to do something it wouldn't do otherwise you're trying to get power beyond your one vote. That's why it's an abuse.

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

#894

Post by mantas »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #865
mantas wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the US wants AI/autonomous weapons then they should agree to have their troops held accountable at the The Hague International Court of Justice. Why would US agree to that if Russia or China couldn't care less about it? That'd be just handicapping the military.

because it'd be less hypocritical when playing "world-police"

But that'd cripple the world-police and China or Russia would have much more leverage.

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

#895

Post by aurelianito »

betolink wrote: post #796
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just a reminder: you are writing this over the internet - that one was funded by the pentagon too (darpanet) http://ccr.sigcomm.org/archive/1995/jan95/ccr-9501-clark.pdf Here they say that the design of the internet was very much determined by the military priorities of the project (Telcos had different priorities so they came up with OSI where the link layer is supposed to be reliable, as opposed to DARPANET/IP, whe…

There is a huge difference between creating a network protocol and designing autonomous killer drones.

Self driving vehicles were originally funded by DARPA with the idea to use them in combat. Now self driving vehicles are our best hope to significantly reduce road kills. And that will generate a deficit in organ donors. Ethics are complicated.

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

#896

Post by wackspurt »

Relevant here: "Why don't I take military funding?" by Prof. Benjamin Kuipers.

https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~kuipers/opinions/no-military-fun...

From the introduction: """ Mostly it's a testimony that it's possible to have a successful career in computer science without taking military funding. My position has its roots in the Vietnam War, when I was a conscientious objector, did alternative service instead of submitting to the draft, and joined the Society of Friends (Quakers). During the 1980s and 90s, the position seemed to lose some of its urgency, so it became more of a testimony about career paths.

Since September 11, 2001, all the urgency is back. The defense of our country is at stake, so this testimony becomes critical. In short, I believe that non-violent methods of conflict resolution provide the only methods for protecting our country against the deadly threats we face in the long run. Military action, with its inevitable consequences to civilian populations, creates and fuels deadly threats, and therefore increases the danger that our country faces. """

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

#897

Post by bantunes »

reacweb wrote: post #889
cmontella wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Damned if we do and damned if we don't?

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

#898

Post by unclebucknasty »

flamedoge wrote: post #891
unclebucknasty wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incredibly valid for Silicon Valley engineers these days If one could engineer a solution to save lives, but instead uses his/her talents to build the nth iteration of, say, a food delivery app, does he/she bear any ethical culpability? Because it seems the bigger challenge for engineers is not avoiding overt evil, but in the opportunity cost of spending their time on work of significantly lesser consequence than t…

Engineers, like most human beings, are free to waste their talent. It wouldn't be nice to demand some kind of moral responsibility from engineers just because they can do more. How they live would be up to them, and free market solution would be far better terms under which they would be convinced to do more.

Yes, we're all free to choose, which might include doing things that are overtly immoral (as in the parent discussion).

My question was whether it's just as immoral a choice to not use one's potential to help people as it is to use one's talent to overtly harm people.

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

#899

Post by skate22 »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #873
ByThyGrace wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One could say the same of atomic weapons, yet it's likely that nuclear weapons have saved more lives that we can even imagine. The impact of war was accelerating in raw numbers, and increasing in relative numbers, all the way up to WW2. 3-4% of the world's population was killed in WW2. In today's terms that would be ~270 million people. Think about that number for a minute. Let's put it in scales of 9/11s. During 9/1…

Peace for the west != peace for mankind

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

#900

Post by MikkoFinell »

Gatsky wrote: post #836
MikkoFinell wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats wrong, which you'd know if you actually read it.

I have to disagree with you, all his arguments held back then, there was just less data. He also concedes that the statistical modeling relies on violence afflicting a proportion of the population, rather than absolute numbers - all well and good but an important distinction. Also your point is entirely fallacious anyway in the context of this thread. His book highlights a trend which cannot be disentangled from the…

I don't understand what you mean by "all his arguments held back then" when a significant portion of the book explicitly shows and discusses data regarding the number of wars fought during 1800 and before, compared to 1900 and early 2000. And the fact that another significant portion of the book deals with data about how much more likely a person is to die from violence in general during that period compared to the more recent period. I'm still convinced you have not read the book, and I suspect that is why your counterargument to it resembles a strawman.
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