Working with China and other despotic regimes is cool, though?
What military technology is Google currently developing for the Chinese military?
Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
951–960 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#952Their entire career choice and their current sky-high yearly salaries plus the stock price are based on what fundamentally was a military need i.e. the internet (or the TCP/IP protocol to be exact).
The right course of action IMO would be to leave Google if you are unsatisfied with working for Pentagon.
But Google HAS to work for the Pentagon and especially on AI because the knowledge that comes out of this isn't only going to be military but to a much higher degree and relevant extent for civilized use.
Technology is always a double-edged sword and we have to learn to deal with the powers it gives us. But to not be on the forefront of technology when you can is a losers game and Google would lose much of its value if it isn't at the forefront.
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#953Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>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. Is the answer to that not obvious? It's the difference between negligence and pre-meditation/mens rea.
The suggestion that it might be obvious is central to the question and what makes it interesting (to me).
Because, yes, it would seem obvious.
>It's the difference between negligence and pre-meditation/mens rea.
a) you're using legal definitions when the question is about morality and b) it's not negligence to actively choose one path over another. It's simply making a decision, and I was asking if that decision can be considered a moral one.
Started off as a philosophical question, but seems to have gone a bit literal. Oh well, it happens.
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#954From 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…
Had the exact same predicament. Struggled with it morally, until I was exclusively working on offensive technologies ("cleanly isolating and neutralizing targets via unmanned air vehicles, out of line of sight with no gps"). That's when I quit and got some of my morality back by joining a quant firm that makes money off of other people purely for the purpose of making money and nothing else.
No wonder I have such an alcohol problem...
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#955Better headline:
"Google Workers Astonished: Found Out They Work In Capitalist System, Not Nerd Commune"
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#956Earlier 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.
Would you deny "killer drones" to the armies and civilians fighting the Nazi Wermacht?
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#957Earlier 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…
As an engineer, founder, and investor I'll note that there's an ethical mandate for investors as well; when I started drone.vc I committed as a Quaker to not investing in "offensive" technologies. Separately, RE: bringing internet to new places, there's reasonable evidence to show that introducing broadband lifts GDP[1], so whatever you may think of Facebook, giving people high-speed connectivity to the whole Interne…
Don't be so sure that "lifts GDP" is an absolute (or even a net) positive for the people in the receiving end of "introducing broadband". Specially if we are talking about underdeveloped backwaters, when you see an increase of GDP you must consider how much of it comes from increased productivity and how much from improved accounting.
If this is the later, you just put a "virgin population" without the social DNA to defend itself into the reach of global capitalism. The most likely output of that is an import/export imbalance from the region to the outside world (neocolonialism) plus the empowerment of the traditional chieftains as enforcers of the absentee investment class (all the same old problems of our preindustrial world, only more so). It is a bit of the worse of both worlds for the average joe living there.
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#958Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's unproductive to sneeringly cast aside the concerns of Google Employees as starry eyed activism but here we are. Its uncontroversial to state that the US military has committed war crimes and engaged in military campaigns across the world in spite of international law. Google is working the military to expand the capabilities to carry out these attacks and to work on these projects is to either agree ideologicall…
> Its uncontroversial to state that the US military has committed war crimes and engaged in military campaigns across the world in spite of international law. I don't disagree with this. The question I'm trying to figure out -- which powerful nation should we look to for an example on how to do better? Also, are there are any benefits to the U.S. maintaining hegemony as the top military power that we need to weigh in…
Sure in the same way that the Macedonians and Mongols were good for the Silk Road, the United States and the Bretton Woods system is fantastic for international shipping and suppressing regional conflicts.
Even if the US is a net positive I believe that almost none of the campaigns it has engaged in the last 20 years have done anything to contribute to that. I can't abide by that and would urge anyone with a conscience to do the same.
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#959Earlier 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.
I don't see droning ISIS terrorists as immoral, sorry.
Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project
#960Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I can't find a reference but there was a story about a drummer or bugler or something in an army, and when his side was defeated the opposing prince was about to kill him, and he said "No, I have done you no harm! I never bore weapons against you, I only played my instrument so my friends would be encouraged." And the prince said "by aiding them you killed my men" and slew the man.
And then the prince also killed the blacksmiths, because they made swords, and the farmers because their crops had fed the army, and cobbler because they made boots that people in the army wore, and the lumberjacks because their trees were used to construct siege engine, and the cattle herders because their oxen had been used to pull the army supply wagons, and the printers because their printing presses had been used to encourage the army, and the weavers because their cloth and clothed the army, and the tailors, because they had sewed clothes for the army, and the dye makers because their dye had colored the flags and uniforms of the army, and the tanners because their leather had been used to make the saddles for the cavalry, and the merchants because their money and taxes and paid for the state to have the army.
And then the people in the next town all got together and said, "Let us all work together and see that this prince is never able to defeat our army."