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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

#901

Post by unclebucknasty »

lsc wrote: post #863
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…

I think you're taking the idea too far. look at what the civil engineers have: https://www.asce.org/code-of-ethics/ Yes, yes, we have a responsibility to not defraud people, and to not work on obviously evil projects, and even to speak out if your employer is, say, building a bridge that is not up to the clearly defined, established standards. (which is super different from when you think a bridge will collapse, but…

>look at what the civil engineers have

Well, that's a narrow view of ethical guidelines in conducting one's work. We all generally agree that people shouldn't be evil.

My question sits above that. Is it enough for a moral society to simply decline to do evil? Or do we have a responsibility beyond that? And if it's the latter, then whose responsibility is it?

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

#902

Post by idlewords »

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.

You can talk yourself into working on anything at all with this rationalization.

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

#903

Post by hannasanarion »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #793
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…

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…

Nobody said "never make anything for DARPA". The point is just that you have to think through the consequences of your work. Making a network protocol for DARPA is different from making a casualty maximization algorithm for DARPA.

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

#904

Post by hannasanarion »

justonepost wrote: post #714
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…

The internet itself is an evolution of darpa net.

And that means that I have to make anything that DARPA asks for from now until the end of time?

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

#905

Post by aangjie »

jsilence wrote: post #847
colordrops wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost any technology can be weaponized. It's not about the particular technology you work on, but who it's being built for and the intended application.

please help me understand how a substance that turns sand into soil, developed to green the deserts, can be used as a weapon. To me this argument that "anything can be used in evil ways" is a poor excuse used to distract from the issue.

Here's a thought, what if you can get the same substance to work on the sand part of concrete?? It assumes more research and work, but the argument has a kernel of truth.. I don't sure I agree with using that to not think about the ethics of what you do, but nevertheless.

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

#906

Post by aangjie »

didibus wrote: post #792
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…

Why would the engineers be more burdened with the ethics of their creation over the investors, founders, managements, lawyers, execs, CEOs and government policy makers who all contributed to, promoted and made happen its fabrication by engineers?

Ah.. the causality.. the argument can be made that without engineers the creation would never happen, (even if others are still trying to make money without ethics..).

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

#907

Post by fsloth »

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…

I don't think you can ever blame the engineer who designs the weapon, unless it is obviously ethically problematic like, a better iron maiden (as an example, I know it's probably a hoax device).

Merely offering a force projecting capability is not evil.

If you look at world history, the only concrete definition of who has most political power is this: it's the party with the most capability for projecting violence in a given area.

Small close knit groups that live outside of large populations can live independently and do without military force. Once you have a large population with more or less fixed hearth and home the party with most violence projection capability owns them politically.

This dynamic is played in almost ridiculously minuscule scale in the peloponnesian wars of the greek city states of antiquity.

The pathological manifestation of this principle can be viewed, say, in the rise of ISIS and the Somali warlords.

While a modern state is seldom a benevolent actor, at least in the western countries it's the best of known alternatives.

In this framework violence is a key tool of the state, just like good governance, tax collection, etc.

Given that violence is a necessity, in my opinion designing military instruments in itself is not evil. It's not as good as designing new vaccines, so there is some ethical scale in the matter, but I'm damned if I can put it in concrete terms.

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

#908

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

aurelianito wrote: post #895
betolink wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, self driving cars will/might make well over a third of the workforce redundant (the brother of my wife is a driver, that makes it personal for me), I think that this has the potential to create major tensions within society. My point is that innovations have the potential to be applied in different contexts. So what?

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

#910

Post by pavs »

sseth wrote: post #285
stale2002 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we already have nukes, why would we need anything else? 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.

Nukes are an instrument of last resort, but you don't want to get to the point where that is your only option. And it is possible that technical advances in missile defence may blunt this advantage. Being able to prevent friendly (and even neutral) countries from being bullied or going over to the dark side is also important because ultimately the best defence against rising autocratic forces is to ensure a broad all…

> If a country like the USA can have its elections manipulated, how vulnerable might smaller democracies be?

This has to be a joke, right? The USA has been responsible for undermining democracy all over the world more than any other country.

This is a just a partial list that we are aware of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

It is also implicated (though not directly proved), that USA was responsible for Arab spring.

https://www.quora.com/Was-the-USA-behind-the-Arab-Spring-upr...

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