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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

#991

Post by kevinmchugh »

spdionis wrote: post #986
supertrope wrote: post #967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alfred Nobel thought so too with dynamite. "Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops."

Isn't that what is kinda happening with nuclear weapons though? I would argue we have less armed conflict nowadays exactly for the reasoning in that quote. Dynamite did not really allow for two army corps to mutually annihilate each other in a second, nuclear weapons actually do.

Nuclear weapons didn't stop wars, and they didn't stop major powers from fighting each other. It just moved to proxy wars. Proxy wars have been common for a long time. Maybe they've stopped world wars, but maybe the two World Wars were exceptions and not a guaranteed feature. I don't know how to quantify whether there are greater or fewer armed conflicts between states since the invention of nuclear weapons.

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

#992

Post by slededit »

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.

You can't imagine any way terraforming sand dunes on mass scale might do damage to nearby countries? It would be akin to diverting a river upstream which was an act of war historically.

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

#993

Post by pryce »

donw wrote: post #703
pryce wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Literally tens of millions of responsible Americans walk around, every day, carrying semi-automatic weapons, and this is not a problem. The idea that 'this is not a problem' is exactly the thing under dispute, so I don't think it should be cheerfully asserted Objectors to this climate of easy access to firearms -wrong or right- will point to things like: * criminal gun violence and mass shootings (a phenomenon that…

> The idea that 'this is not a problem' is exactly the thing under dispute, so I don't think it should be cheerfully asserted. There are sixteen million Americans with concealed-carry licenses, plus fourteen states that allow for "constitutional carry" (e.g., no license required). (Keep in mind that I do think that we should require training and licensing for concealed carry, although this needs to be balanced with n…

Bear in mind, my above comment highlighted that for objectors the issue is far wider than murder, and also involves the presence of accessible weaponry's influence on: accidental deaths, suicides, and drivers of militarization of police, all of which were introduced before your response - and absolutely none of which would even be visible through the statistical lens you have chosen to employ.

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

#994

Post by jononor »

nyxtom wrote: post #75

I for one would rather have a drone strike program that actually actively avoids civilian casualties as much as possible. There are certainly gray areas here as far as the use of that program from a political standpoint (whether the strikes are warranted or whether it is part of regime changes). On the other hand, by not helping the military become more efficient we also risk losing existing lives (our own and civili…

The current approach to reducing civilian casualties in airstrikes is to label any man above 18 as a combatant by default.

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

#995

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> And it won't be as easy as deciding between a heart valve and a gas chamber

That's the truth.

Did the engineers of the atomic bomb save millions of lives and usher in an era of unprecedented peace? Or did they slaughter millions of innocents and sow the seeds of humanity's destruction?

It's been 70 years; we've had plenty of time to make up our minds.

Many inventions are not so easily classified as innately good or evil.

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

#996

Post by Mandatum »

gaius wrote: post #340
exolymph wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the "atrocities in the past" metric, any country would be a bad choice. The Trail of Tears comes to mind.

New Zealand might be OK

Look up Black Saturday. But by and large, we're not nearly as bad as most countries.

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

#997

Post by ionised »

reacweb wrote: post #984
ionised wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not going to change the military from the inside anymore than Snowden could change the NSA from the inside. Thinking you can is naive at best.

Snowden was inside and his actions have an impact on NSA. I hope these kinds of organisations will understand that if they want to avoid similar whistleblowers, they need to have a better management that listen to their "halflings".

Snowden didn't change anything from the inside. He tried and failed before realising a public-interest leak was the only way.

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

#998

Post by deciplex »

chrisseaton wrote: post #632
deciplex wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post seems like it was probably sarcasm but I can't tell. Just in case, though: we already have that.

My post wasn't sarcasm. Nobody thinks the current system is perfect or not vulnerable to corruption or special interests etc, but at least it attempts to be representative of the people and accountable, and to be well informed through intelligence networks and professional analysis. A dictatorship of a union of Google employees forcing the hand of the government based on what they're angry about from Twitter doesn't…

I think if you can twist your head enough to believe that our current system "at least attempts" (but, by implication, even you seem to agree still fails) to be representative of the people, but also believe that any employee union is a priori unrepresentative, you might be showing some bias. Maybe a lot of it, actually. And it doesn't help that you immediately heap a bunch of strawmen on this hypothetical Google union, either.

Edit: from your original post it also occurs to me you might think union leadership is never elected? But it almost always is (usually by law, in fact).

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

#1000

Post by Tepix »

mmirate wrote: post #962
Tepix wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must love those weapons from the Slaughterbots video then https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA Do you also love the other implications?

Yes and thoroughly yes. Because our military's allegiance is to the Constitution not to any single executive administration; because the military have far more resources to purchase bots or counterbots than the police do; and because only an idiot would actually have that tech and yet fail to also have, at minimum, an equally-maneuverable ablative countermeasure drone.

That's like saying only an idiot would have a nuke and not have a counter weapon for a nuke. It's not a given at all. The video implies that people will have to hide behind iron curtains for (partial) security.
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