Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

I don't think Google would stop all wars by not contributing to this project. But Google, and the employees who work at Google, has power - a kind of power that's very, very different from my power as an individual when paying taxes or when voting for a federal employee (behaviors that create dissonance for me because they contribute to the war machine). I think that power can, and should, be used to prevent wars - not to make them "cleaner". The small attempt at organizing protests made by some employees at the company was a good step, but the only one I have heard of (maybe there have been others?) and I want the people who have the most access to power to start thinking about what they are doing and trying to make more positive changes.

Consume less. Be more mindful of environmental damage. Speak out against the oppressive regimes that help murder people.

You know what, most employees of Google or Facebook would vehemently disagree, including American citizens.

In fact, say anything like that in Google's internal groups and I'm sure some lawyerfolk will descend down on you, hissing "Would you please stop talking about what you have zero ideas about?" (These days it might even involve HR. After all, saying to half of your coworkers that their work amounts to being a fifth column wouldn't go too well...)

I hold the controversial (and often dismissed) opinion that Google is dying. I assert they are dying in part because they built a company around search advertising before they knew how to build a company, their initial success gave them the confidence and agency to create structural impediments to their ability to do anything but search advertising. And the search advertising market is not only saturated it is getting more competitive as the easy gains to be made there have already been milked for what they are worth.

I support that opinion on the meager evidence of how they more and more cravenly monetize properties that they previously kept free of such things, their repeated failed attempts at building any other business outside of search that brings anything close to the margins they need for their business model to work, and the lack of 'barriers' to other well funded and durable companies from taking away everything that is special from them. (Bing, Uber, Cruise, Facebook, Apple, Etc.) They get less and less per click and they spend more and more to buy more traffic for their search boxes as documented in their financial statements for the last decade.

They have repeatedly come under attack from outside agencies which see their use of, and exploitation of data about people as either anti-competitive or a violation of basic human rights. Those efforts have resulted in fines and legislation that has been cutting off other ways to monetize the traffic of their place in search.

From that misguided perspective, military contracts make total sense. What they have is a tremendous infrastructure that can be wielded by a relatively small number of engineers to do amazing things. For now, that capability is unique. By turning it from a cost center into a profit center (or even a less cost center) it can help them make the profits they need to keep things rolling. When I was working there I got to see what spending 4 billion dollars a year on infrastructure buys you. It rivals what nation states can field, it rivals what the US government can field. Renting that out to a price insensitive buyer for a unique asset? Sounds like saving yourself from dying to me.

Blind had a poll and it showed the exact opposite, with a strong majority for Maven.