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U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

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Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#61

Post by make3 »

kvartz wrote: post #50
jadedhacker wrote: post #4

Interesting, military only gave ~$1M for such an ambitious project while Uber is burning billions a year and could easily afford this. My speculation is that this partnership is first and foremost an attempt to provide Uber with a patina of respectability for this attempt and access to military technical expertise. Uber just crashed and burned on self driving, something it desperately needs to quench its towering mon…

According to Gizmodo report military is using Google's Tensor Flow units for footage processing, it would be fair to assume that it's simply a trial contract to see if they can process some of that footage. That could potentially mean government contracts for private companies going to the lowest bidder, some time in the near future.

tensorflow is a machine learning API. you're thinking of TPUs

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#62

Post by Donald »

jadedhacker wrote: post #4

Interesting, military only gave ~$1M for such an ambitious project while Uber is burning billions a year and could easily afford this. My speculation is that this partnership is first and foremost an attempt to provide Uber with a patina of respectability for this attempt and access to military technical expertise. Uber just crashed and burned on self driving, something it desperately needs to quench its towering mon…

This is a cooperative research and development agreement ("CRADA"), which is generally a technology sharing vehicle. Money flows from the non-federal party to the federal party on these agreements. Looks like ARL is matching the funds, so Uber is putting $500k on the CRADA and ARL will reciprocate with $500k in sole-source funding on an actual contracting vehicle. I'd be surprised if the $500k paid for anything more than a proof of concept demonstration on both sides.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#63

Post by matthewaveryusa »

Bobbleoxs wrote: post #20

Isn't it ironic whilst Google's engineers are mass protesting against military contracts, Uber already signed a whole bunch without any moral dilemma whatsover. Tells a lot about the company ethics there. On a separate note, could someone enlighten how stacked co-rotoring (moving towards the same direction) may make the aircraft silent and not noisier?

I find it ironic that western countries and their citizens are all kumbaya about the ethics of being a bully nation (militarily and socially) while our empires were built at the expense of those we exploited (colonialism for europeans, post WWII resource-grabs for US.) Everyone in the US forgets that the pollution and poor labor practices in China is the foundation that our buying power and consumption is based off of.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#64

Post by notheguyouthink »

kerng wrote: post #56
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

Some employees raising concerns is something, compared to noone raising concerns I'd say. It shows difference in openess and culture between the two organizations.

Hard to say what that culture is exactly, though. It could simply be a culture where the employees feel safe enough to express concern with the company. Ie, both employee groups have the same numbers of people who care about ethics, but one group feels more able to express those concerns.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#65

Post by glogla »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #27
Bobbleoxs wrote: post #20

Isn't it ironic whilst Google's engineers are mass protesting against military contracts, Uber already signed a whole bunch without any moral dilemma whatsover. Tells a lot about the company ethics there. On a separate note, could someone enlighten how stacked co-rotoring (moving towards the same direction) may make the aircraft silent and not noisier?

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

I mean, if they were people with strong ethics who don't want to do harm, they probably wouldn't be working for Google in the first place.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#66

Post by Steltek »

glogla wrote: post #65
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

I mean, if they were people with strong ethics who don't want to do harm, they probably wouldn't be working for Google in the first place.

That's quite a leap to equate "okay with killing people" to "working at Google".

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#67

Post by frockington »

fiiv wrote: post #22
shanghaiaway wrote: post #11

Good reason for legislators to kick Uber out of their country.

I think this is definitely true. There are many countries in the world that are looking for an excuse to turn public opinion against Uber, and having the US Army as a partner is definitely a good way to do that.

And then they can also scrap all of the planes, space programs, tor networks, telephones and just about every other modern technology that the US Military has in someway funded

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#68

Post by frockington »

matt4077 wrote: post #14

One would think Uber has enough problems recruiting and retaining talented people, what with "go fast and break things (people)". Now it's not just casual misogyny and user surveillance. Your work may actually kill people when used as intended.

And what if the workers want to help kill terrorist/enemy combatants? I'm sure there is a significant portion of the population that would find this as a positive

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#70

Post by zeusk »

pjc50 wrote: post #17

Guessing this refers to http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8640985.html : multiple co-axial rotors spinning in the same direction sounds a bit odd but evidently does something clever with wakes to increase lift / reduce noise.

Well, jet engines are internally co-axial rotors spinning in the same direction (except for some with contra rotating HP and LP).
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