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

I don't think its that simple. Weddings may constitute a collection of individuals key to a war effort and in striking a wedding one might prevent the devastation of a prolonged conflict. Also Middle Eastern weddings can occasionally be mis-interpreted as militant given the propensity for arms fire in celebration.

If a drone strike hit an American wedding they would ground their _home_ fleet. Its a key difference. The information for an electorate of a democratic state to make more empathetic choices are available its just a question of whether:

* The electorate are wilfully ignorant of foreign suffering (as its tortuous to read)

* The electorate are kept ignorant intentionally or unintentionally as a product of the conflict for eye balls between media institutions.

* The electorate are not able to make impactful choices due to the type of democracy they have.

I'd argue its a bit of every one of those things.

I prefer to measure things in outcomes and I would posit the major difference in supplying or not supplying arms to a conflict is merely the level of guilt from the origin of supply. People are still going to die be it by drone, missile, mortar, ak-47 or spear. We could argue that arms sales can enable conflict by giving one side an apparent advantage that they choose to capitalise on but that's a messy problem to investigate. Surely to wish to capitalise means that someone has already drawn the lines and is considering hostilities. What makes a war? The lines being drawn or the weapons or a combination of many factors multiplied over time and key events or decisions made by actors on either side? One may decide to war without advantage, one may choose not to war with advantage. So I don't think its as clear cut as weapon sales == war.

Because most people here are rather left-wing, and I feel that the majority of lefties hold the US military establishment (rightfully, IMHO) in very low regard, due to recent activities and engagements — e.g. the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombing of Libya and Syria, and so on.

Not to imply this is only a position of the political left; it's my experience, however, that left-wing folk, including myself, are not exactly overflowing with praise for the US military...

Do US citizens hate their army so much? The typical international stereotype for Americans is the opposite, especially with high respect for soldiers and veterans. Although I guess that's slightly different: respect for the individuals, but less respect for the overall organization that has them fighting "useless" wars. Little of it's fighting is fighting direct threats to the US mainland.

The US still has a culture around respecting the military that's quite foreign to many other countries.

You should go after targets over which you have some leverage.

As a google engineer, you have the ability to impact this particular program in a way that you can’t impact what other military programs do.

Just as an American citizen you have more ability to impact American policy than you do Russian policy.

Make an impact where you have the power to make an impact.

I just quit my job because I was working on a DHS contract and it was getting harder and harder to ignore what they were doing to immigrants.

It’s small, but I don’t want to have to answer for what I was doing to my children.

For people who still don't see any problem in this, I have to remind you that ultimately the guy on top of the military hierarchy in charge for selecting the drones with AI targets is... Donald Trump. If you're not scared now, I don't know what to do anymore.

At some point, I thought that the main goal of these big startups with tons of claims and wishful thinking was to make the world a better place and help humanity to become a better version of itself. Instead now they create tools and weapons to "reduce collateral damages" in governemental induced wars (which have not solved anything over the last 20 years in Middle East but only increased cash flow in West pockets, made tons of death, both there and in West countries), and they have access to information related with most of the citizens at the same time. OK cool.

In 10 years we will talk about whistleblowers killed by drones using AI as well.