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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

#171

Post by repolfx »

cpeterso wrote: post #144
remarkEon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason this is a problem is something you stated: Google brands itself as a global company. I’m an American and while I acknowledge the density of intelligent people that work at Google, the fact that they ostensibly have “global interests” makes me concerned that they could do this work safely. Please do not interpret that as some jingoistic platitude. That’s just...reality. While the “company” may be lo…

Similarly, how would people feel if Google, as a global company, was developing drone tech for other countries?

Better example - how would all these American Googlers feel if Google started selling drone tech to a country that then began drone striking Americans, e.g. at sea?

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

#172

Post by marklgr »

slg wrote: post #161
eksemplar wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the people who build the Death Star are innocent? The guilty don’t feel guilty, they learn not to. I wouldn’t personally want to work in weapons development, but I certainly wouldn’t want to work in weapons development for a military that as a result of its offensive use of its weapons is making children in the third world afraid of blue skies. But I have a gmail and I use google maps, so I’m not really in a posit…

I know you are being a little facetious with the Death Star line, but I think that bares a distinction because it would be a WMD and part of its intended purpose is to kill civilians. Likewise in our world developing indiscriminate killing WMDs like bio-weapons deserves extra scrutiny. Drones are not indiscriminate killing machines any more than manned aircraft. If they are used indiscriminately, the problem should b…

Drones can be produced and deployed in higher quantities than aircraft, and with AI you won't necessarily need one man behind each drone. So yes, it is potentially worse than aircraft, for the same reason a police/army of bots could potentially be much worse than a "conventional" one.

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

#173

Post by apatters »

murukesh_s wrote: post #157
apatters wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all highly opinionated statements, but: - If you're American, you should support Google developing technology for the US military. - If you're human, you should support a foreign policy that only considers military action as a last resort. - If you're human, you should support early, aggressive, global regulation of the military applications of AI and drones. We made this mistake with nuclear. We leveled Hi…

> - If you're American, you should support Google developing technology for the US military. Why? Americans are not humans?

I meant to imply that Americans (or citizens of any nation) have certain interests that not all humans share, but in general, we're a lot closer than we think.

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

#174

Post by omeid2 »

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…

Perhaps this will shed some light: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/15/sonia-kennebeck...

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

#175

Post by johnsprial »

citrablue wrote: post #100
strooper wrote: post #58

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military. GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi and all tech giants of that era did that with pride during WWII. Then why can't Google, Facebook for USA? Perhaps the illusion of globalization is making us perceive Google, Facebook and other international giants as global companies. Although, geniuses from around the world have significant contributions…

What is your opinion of the work that IBM did for the Germans in WW2?

or the work IBM did for the apartheid government in South Africa?

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

#176

Post by tzzuop »

slg wrote: post #140
mattnewton wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they oppose the drone warfare program, which is killing noncombatants in nominally allied countries. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-oba... It’s not the military that is evil, it’s this particular program in the eyes of many. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24557333 Disclaimer: I am also fortunate to work at Google an…

>Because they oppose the drone warfare program, which is killing noncombatants in nominally allied countries. I don't understand this logic. Drones are a weapon. They are not any more evil than any other weapon that the military uses. They aren't killing people autonomously. There is a human pilot behind every death. The pilot just happens to be hundreds or thousands miles away from the aircraft. Would we be fine wit…

"We kill based on metadata"

Phonenumbers are the target identifier.

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

#177

Post by meritt »

repolfx wrote: post #170
meritt wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no bending necessary. Google defined [1] what they meant in their IPO filing. > We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains So it boils down to the simple interpretation: Is helping the U.S. military consistent with doing good things for the world? Public opinio…

For what it's worth I also worked for Google for many years. And I'm hardly a shrinking liberal violet. I think it was stupid to fire Damore. But the mental gymnastics on display in this thread are depressing. Is helping the U.S. military consistent with doing good things for the world? Google has always been a global company with most of its users and employees outside of the USA. You can't even stop yourself talkin…

> with the obvious consequence of mass deaths of innocent people

So the drone program has a very ineffective targeting algorithm, one so bad it has absolutely catastrophic results, and we should be upset they've tried to hire the one company who spent the past two decades refining their world-class targeting algorithms? Nobody targets better than Google.

If we want to shut down the drone program, by all means I support that notion, call your legislators though I have a feeling with the current abomination of an administration in place, it's going to fall on deaf ears for a while. But in the meantime, while we are faced with the reality of a drone program, I'm elated to hear they might be getting some much needed help to stop killing innocents.

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

#178

Post by ninjamayo »

strooper wrote: post #58

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military. GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi and all tech giants of that era did that with pride during WWII. Then why can't Google, Facebook for USA? Perhaps the illusion of globalization is making us perceive Google, Facebook and other international giants as global companies. Although, geniuses from around the world have significant contributions…

Like Porsche or Siemens did for the Nazis for example. Nothing wrong there. I wonder how you would feel and what you would say if you were on the other end of these weapons e.g an innocent Afghan civilian.

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

#179

Post by AmericanChopper »

krageon wrote: post #168
AmericanChopper wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no logic to your argument here at all. You’re saying that every company that supplies anything to the military is automatically wielding an unethical influence to create war on false pretences. I think you can certainly find examples where commercial entities have played a suspicious role in that respect, but to say that simply by supplying goods or services to the military you are war mongering is completel…

He is saying that any company that supplies to a military has an economic incentive to make sure war happens. Seeing as they profit from the size of the military, that's not exactly far-fetched.

He’s making an enormous and baseless jump that any company that supplies the military must also be involved corruption and unethical war mongering. Just because an economic insentive exists, doesn’t mean people will exploit it. That’s just as senseless as saying that I’m probably a drug dealer because there’s an economic insentive for me to be. Aside from the complete lack of logic in this claim, it also doesn’t even make sense, since the military gets a budget every year, regardless of whether there’s a war to fight.

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

#180

Post by bonesss »

apatters wrote: post #154
strooper wrote: post #58

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military. GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi and all tech giants of that era did that with pride during WWII. Then why can't Google, Facebook for USA? Perhaps the illusion of globalization is making us perceive Google, Facebook and other international giants as global companies. Although, geniuses from around the world have significant contributions…

These are all highly opinionated statements, but: - If you're American, you should support Google developing technology for the US military. - If you're human, you should support a foreign policy that only considers military action as a last resort. - If you're human, you should support early, aggressive, global regulation of the military applications of AI and drones. We made this mistake with nuclear. We leveled Hi…

> ... you should support early, aggressive, global regulation of the military applications of AI and drones.

The history of global regulations on the military application of useful military technologies is not too impressive. The second a shooting war breaks out those rules will be forgotten, giving a huge head-start to anyone shady enough to ignore them wholesale.

"AI" has been used in war since WW2. Strapping an IED onto a quadcopter isn't a shocking idea, and the economics of 1000+ stealth-killer UAVs vs 1 not-that-stealth Navy Boat are pretty undeniable over time...

AIs and Drones are inevitably coming to warfare -- they're here already. Economic unions that make warfare unthinkable may be a better long term bet (thanks, Trump!).

> We leveled Hiroshima, we leveled Nagasaki, we fueled decades of animosity between the Soviets and the West that still plagues the world today

Mmmm that animosity was not created by bombing two Japanese cities, among many, with a new weapon type. That animosity was a freight train that could have kept WWII going another decade, and there was a real problem of how that war might look for our side had a resurgent Russia conquered Japan early in. They took Manchuria just a few days after the second bomb, IIRC, so their threat was far from hypothetical.

Those bombs were sending a clear and distinct message to the Soviets. It worked. I'd rather have animosity than a nuclear WWIII.

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