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

theintercept.com

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

#121

Post by will4274 »

wavefunction wrote: post #34
AmericanChopper wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s a very oversimplified opinion. Depending on the alternative, war can certainly be the moral decision. I don’t think you’d find many would who would describe The Unions war on slavery as Evil.

It wasn't a war on Slavery though, as Lincoln only took the extraordinary step of releasing the Emancipation Proclamation late in the war.

Yes, it was. South Carolina was the first state to secede; South Carolina cited slavery in their declaration of secession; the war began with secession or immediately following and because of secession. The civil war was fought over slavery.

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

#122

Post by smt88 »

mark_edward wrote: post #115
smt88 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should read some stats on Syria and get back to us.

I think you should read some stats on Korea or Vietnam and get back to me

Neither of those conflicts happened after the end of the Cold War.

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

#123

Post by ocdtrekkie »

aresant wrote: post #119
blackrock wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a conflict of interest. The public has put their trust into Google for 20 years. We supported them. We cheered them on. We have voluntarily given them all our personal data. Our emails. Our instant messages. Our voices. All of it feeds into their massive database for them to mine. We put our faith into them, in the hopes that they would honor their creed, that they would do no evil. But gradually, that…

"By doing the military's bidding, then Google is now far scarier than Microsoft ever was." I understand your point, but Microsoft does an awful lot of business with the military. Last year they won a contract to put every employee in the DOD on Win 10(1). Not sure it's particularly MORE evil for Google to supply AI support to the Military than for Microsoft to enable the office drones systematically organize weapon s…

Google will actively help develop vision systems for weaponized drones. Which, whether Google wants to admit or not, means they are developing systems which are going to target and kill humans.

Microsoft sells a product that literally anyone (but Iran and North Korea) can buy. You can buy it or not. And you can buy extended support for it (or not).

Do you really consider these the same?

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

#124

Post by mrtksn »

johnchristopher wrote: post #111
mrtksn wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

April 2004: We will machine-read your e-mails so that we can show you banners more efficiently. No funny business, we promise. We also collect all kind of data about you, even offline data but no biggie. April 2018: We developed all that technology by reading your e-mails and analysing your daily life, now we will make military gear with all the expertise we know about the world and the human population so that polit…

> PS: We control the information flow, we can start and stop political conflicts by selectively displaying information [..] I see that claim thrown around a lot but nothing ever backs that up.

It's mostly a deduction. The hypothesis is that if you can control what information is available you can affect the opinions and feelings of the people who receive that information.

There's a study conducted by Facebook about controlling emotions by means of content curation. If Facebook can do it, Google too can do it: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...

Google is the dominant search engine and these days they even host the content through AMP and they own the most popular web browser and mobile computers operating system. They have not only the means to reach people and curate the content generated by other people, they can also change the content created by other people(AMP pages) and disguise their actions(since they control the app that displays the content).

Let's travel in time and go back to the WW2 days and mention Hitler as any proper online political discussion would eventually do.

Don't you think that it would be very convenient for Hitler if he had a way to show "how awful Jews are"? Wouldn't he loved it if Germans search results about economical crisis or gas prices would display how "greedy Jewish bankers are destroying the lives of honest German workers" or any other political or cultural Nazi propaganda?

Unless we switch to cryptographically signing all the content we create and learn to distrust any content that's not signed and have a way to verify that the signed content curation is not politically influenced, giants like Google and Facebook would have the power to make/break countries, start/stop lynches or even genocide.

There's a reason why China doesn't allow search results about Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and all the governments are trying to find a way to control the information flow.

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

#125

Post by zdkl »

non_sequitur wrote: post #89
oliveshell wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in God’s name are you asking? You seem confused as to the nature of my comment, which was merely pointing out the massive difference in context between WWII and today.

So your contention is that you have to be fighting a world war in order to help your military? (The post you responded to) There's no other reason to help your military? Really? Edit: this came out a bit snide so let me elaborate. There are plenty of reasons you may want to help your military when there isn't a world war going on. You can do it for patriotism. You can do it for the economics. You can do it because mi…

Yeah it's fairly obvious you aren't a military man, thank you for saying it explicitely.

The core of my issue with your points is this belief: >the threat of military force is what underpins the overall fairly secure world that we live in

That hasn't been true since some time after the first gulf war. Asymmetrical warfare (good old guerilla/"terrorism", cyberespionnage..) aren't operational theaters on which carrier groups present determining advantages.

The threat of vitrificating entire valleys hasn't really deterred ideological opponents to the USmil and associated economical or strategic partners.

Basically, you're arguing for a variant of the irresistible movement (strong traditional military capabilities), while ignoring why the metaphorical unmoveable object adapts to resist traditional military pressure.

Ask the soviets how Afghanistan went for them despite their vastly superior military capabilities.

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

#126

Post by xevb3k »

rifung wrote: post #103
blackrock wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a conflict of interest. The public has put their trust into Google for 20 years. We supported them. We cheered them on. We have voluntarily given them all our personal data. Our emails. Our instant messages. Our voices. All of it feeds into their massive database for them to mine. We put our faith into them, in the hopes that they would honor their creed, that they would do no evil. But gradually, that…

> There is nothing that will stop this. The military will find a defense contractor to do their bidding. But Google can voluntarily elect to remove themselves from this sector. Let some other company do it. Let someone else figure it out. The blood of dead innocent civilians will be on their hands. You don't see Raytheon, Boeing, or Northrop crying about it. I work at Google but opinions are my own. This is actually…

And this is why “don’t be evil” is a hopelessly naive statement.

Some would define US military actions as just and civilian casualties (for example) as unfortunate. Others might define them as outright evil.

Almost nobody thinks they are “evil” there’s usually some kind of justification.

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

#127

Post by mc32 »

DrJaws wrote: post #106
rifung wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing that will stop this. The military will find a defense contractor to do their bidding. But Google can voluntarily elect to remove themselves from this sector. Let some other company do it. Let someone else figure it out. The blood of dead innocent civilians will be on their hands. You don't see Raytheon, Boeing, or Northrop crying about it. I work at Google but opinions are my own. This is actually…

Some people will see the evil as the country you are working for is known as the one of the primary aggressors and war initiators of the history that continues to kill directly and indirectly hundreds of thousands of people in other countries bringing them "democracy" where no one asked them for anything. Others will just see it as a necessity and that every company should work and help the government when they are a…

Well, what’s the alternate option? If the US hadn’t been the “police” of the world. It could have been Russia or China or India, would we rather have had them? And don’t say Europe unless you consider France and the U.K. and others and their things.

We don’t live on a vacuum. If you create one, someone will fill it.

I am loath to think of how much worse things could be despite the idiotic wars of Obama and W., I think the world is better off with the US guiding things rather than others.

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

#128

Post by nyolfen »

mikejb wrote: post #43
killjoywashere wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> the world has been a safer place over the last 70 years because there's a global cop who's willing to use force to keep the peace. No, the world has become a safer place for us because we live in nations with nuclear weapons, and they're a pretty good deterrent for attacks by other nations. The world is still a very unsafe place for many people, partly because of this self-proclaimed 'cop'. If you think the US has…

> No, the world has become a safer place for us

it's become safer for everyone:

https://assets.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ourwor...

which obviously isn't to say that nobody dies in wars anymore.

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

#129

Post by Muanh »

meritt wrote: post #110
blackrock wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a conflict of interest. The public has put their trust into Google for 20 years. We supported them. We cheered them on. We have voluntarily given them all our personal data. Our emails. Our instant messages. Our voices. All of it feeds into their massive database for them to mine. We put our faith into them, in the hopes that they would honor their creed, that they would do no evil. But gradually, that…

> Because it is a conflict of interest. No, it's not. That's entirely subjective. It's only a conflict of interest in the heads of people who believe the U.S. military is evil. The problem is that Google has a different interpretation of evil than yourself, and you're struggling to cope with that reality.

So the quote can basically mean anything you want it to mean? You just have to bend your definition of evil into whatever shape suits you.

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

#130

Post by mc32 »

xevb3k wrote: post #126
rifung wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing that will stop this. The military will find a defense contractor to do their bidding. But Google can voluntarily elect to remove themselves from this sector. Let some other company do it. Let someone else figure it out. The blood of dead innocent civilians will be on their hands. You don't see Raytheon, Boeing, or Northrop crying about it. I work at Google but opinions are my own. This is actually…

And this is why “don’t be evil” is a hopelessly naive statement. Some would define US military actions as just and civilian casualties (for example) as unfortunate. Others might define them as outright evil. Almost nobody thinks they are “evil” there’s usually some kind of justification.

So, withdraw and let them duke it out?

It’s not always clear cut. Trump wants to pull out and people call him isolationist. Obama tried to get involved and lit a powder keg. It’s not easy. W, sure, he messed up.

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