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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

#211

Post by lajhsdfkl »

spiderPig wrote: post #108
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…

Think of it the other way, if Lockheed martin were to start a Gmail, GDocs equivalent tomorrow, would you use their services knowing how closely they work with the military? Would global users be comfortable using it? The whole PRISM fiasco isn't far from this. What's stopping the Pentagon from buying access to users data? It's a trust thing, imo.

> if Lockheed martin were to start a Gmail, GDocs equivalent tomorrow, would you use their services knowing how closely they work with the military?

Them working closely with the military would not be the reason I would choose not to use their service considering that almost all emails already go through NSA servers.

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

#212

Post by manigandham »

The world runs on violence. It's the fundamental force that keeps things in order. Modern society with all its rules and laws is nothing without enforcement, which is ultimately delivered via a monopoly license granted to the government with its military and police to keep everyone else safe and free.

Being the best at deploying violence is how you defend against the chaos elsewhere. This isn't about "evil corporations" or misguided intentions, it's about human nature and how there will always be someone somewhere willing to cause harm. The only way to defeat them is by being better at it, but with the appropriate judgement to make sure its in proper defense.

AI has already been a part of warfare for decades and the value of anything other than being the best is rapidly diminishing because of the exponential advantage that modern technology produces. You either stay ahead or lose the war before it's ever begun. Given that choice, I would much rather have the strongest military with all available resources and talent rather than worry and hope the rest of the world stays friendly, until the day it isn't.

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

#213

Post by gaius »

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…

Microsoft does an awful lot of business with the military

There’s never been any allegations that everyone’s Word and Excel documents are being read by MS, has there? Or that they read every email sent via Outlook and Exchange? Not the same thing at all

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

#214

Post by jacquesm »

gaius wrote: post #204
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…

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military Sure, it’s fine but let’s call a spade a spade. Will Google update their global T&Cs to say “we are an American company serving American national interests and by using our services you agree to your data being used for that purpose”? Of course they won’t!

There ought to be a service that re-writes T&C and privacy policies in the most straightforward manner.

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

#215

Post by SiempreViernes »

jonnybgood wrote: post #15
kibwen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's whether one views the intersection of profit and war as intrinsically evil, which for most people is a resounding yes. Humans are already good enough at killing and causing misery for each other without adding additional economic incentives into the mix.

But what if the US military wants to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage as much as possible and wants technology developed to do so?

The obvious way to reach the goal of minimize civilian casualities is to abstain from risky strikes and use smaller yield weapons.

The us military wants technology that justifies them not making more conservative choices, and I don’t see any moral justification for that. Drones are useful for cheaply eliminating risk to one actor, thus allowing more risky behaviour to the side that has them.

But being a cheap risk mitigator is also all they are, they bring no new strategic capability, as evidenced by how easily their use was ramped up and down, so their main effect, the one that could provide some moral justification, is making war cheaper.

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

#216

Post by repolfx »

meritt wrote: post #190
repolfx wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think a lack of quality neural networks is the reason the USA keeps killing innocent people and covering it up, I don't really know what to say to you. The reason it keeps happening is because there are entire divisions of the military that are paid to drone strike people and nobody, at any level of the government, has the backbone or strength to say "enough is enough". They already had multi-billion dollar ta…

You didn't really provide an answer to why the USA keeps killing innocent people other than asserting the US military is designed to kill people (which is absolutely true) but I'm not seeing the reasoning why innocents are killed. Nearly everyone in the world agrees that innocents should not be killed, and I think it's fairly safe to assume the US military does not pride itself on the deaths of innocent civilians. Ob…

If the drone program was somehow 100% precise and it only affected people the US government deemed as "bad people", would you still be against it?

Yes! Obviously! Goodness.

Look, civilised societies have many, many checks and balances to prevent government officials arbitrarily killing people they happen to dislike. This extends to forbidding the death penalty in all the countries where I've lived. This is very important, critical in fact.

The USA routinely classifies people as "bad" without any idea of who they are, what exactly they've done (if anything) and certainly without ever thinking about why those people might have gone "bad". And it never can whilst there are people whose salary is linked to killing people.

The basic disconnect here appears to be your belief that there is a finite supply of terrorists/bad people/whatever, generated via some natural process, and the USA needs to be able to take them out with lethal force and no trials, in foreign countries. If it spends enough time, money and skill on this problem it will eventually be done, and thus the goal is to avoid killing "not bad" people whilst ensuring the "bad" people are taken out.

Whereas my view, and the view of most people in the world according to opinion polls, is that the USA arbitrarily reclassifies people as "bad" in order to keep the drone strike programme filled with targets. The more budget the various drone controlling agencies have, the more targets there will be. The supply of "bad" people is therefore infinite and drone strikes will never end, until the day the budgets for them are zeroed out.

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

#217

Post by mehrdadn »

tzzuop wrote: post #176
slg wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I had completely forgotten about that quote. Thanks for the reminder.

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

#218

Post by kumarvvr »

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…

GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi, etc. have nowhere near the amount of power that Google has over our lives.

Google is a different beast altogether. Recent events have shown that every aspect of our lives can be controlled by data.

Imagine a situation where Google can supply weapons to support human rights violations and simultaneously keep such information from reaching the masses.

Misinforming just 30% of US Population has brought people like trump to power.

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

#219

Post by r3bl »

jacquesm wrote: post #214
gaius wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military Sure, it’s fine but let’s call a spade a spade. Will Google update their global T&Cs to say “we are an American company serving American national interests and by using our services you agree to your data being used for that purpose”? Of course they won’t!

There ought to be a service that re-writes T&C and privacy policies in the most straightforward manner.

Of course there is! https://tosdr.org/

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

#220

Post by Sharlin »

manigandham wrote: post #212

The world runs on violence. It's the fundamental force that keeps things in order. Modern society with all its rules and laws is nothing without enforcement, which is ultimately delivered via a monopoly license granted to the government with its military and police to keep everyone else safe and free. Being the best at deploying violence is how you defend against the chaos elsewhere. This isn't about "evil corporatio…

> You either stay ahead or lose the war before it's ever begun.

We must be able to do better than that.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

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