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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

#291

Post by Marysville »

spupy wrote: post #257
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…

> They aren't killing people autonomously. There is a human pilot behind every death. Oh, so we don't need these weaponized AI developements then? But I suspect that with the AI you could more easily escape responsibility by blaming the software. Who faces the consequences when an autonomous drone bombs a school? "Oops, sorry, it was a bug."

More than the blame, it will dehumanise those deaths. Like a tree falling in a forest....

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

#292

Post by azag0 »

globuous wrote: post #258
fakescience wrote: post #31

To any Google Employees reading this. Don't worry! There are SEVERAL ways you can reduce any cognitive dissonance you might be experiencing as you read more about the evils your company is committing : + rationalization of your own behavior : "I'm not doing this work...I'm working on projects that help people. And ads. But ads are pretty neutral compared to bombing people." + rationalization of others' behavior : "Bo…

Sure. But then, if you live in the "west", please realize the cost of turning on your light bulb or driving your car or wearing your shoes, or turning on the AC, or buying frozen meat. Realize the cost our lifestyle imposes on people elsewhere. The regimes that are protected and the lives we ruin in exchange for us being able to live the lifestyle that we have. Please don't make me say what I didn't. I'm just asking,…

I’ll just copy-paste a comment (not mine) from a different subthread: “This all-or-nothing approach to morality is stupid. Just because not every decision in your life may be 100% morally justifiable, that does not mean “throw all ethics over board”.”

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

#294

Post by detaro »

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…

And if you disagree with the people ordering the killing, you might not want to fulfill their wishes for new weapons improvements, knowing that they'll use them for killings you disagree with. Or if it makes killings politically easier for them, then it's in your interest to not do that. Why is that unlogical?

Let's say your neighbor starts poisoning all the pets in your neighborhood, would you make poison for them because it's not the poison doing the killing?

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

#296

Post by wongarsu »

koolba wrote: post #276
pavelludiq wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a military in order to prevent other people from bombing your country. You absolutely do not need to bomb other people, and if fact if your goal is to not get bombed, not bombing other people might be your best option for a bunch of reasons[1]. If your goal is to systematically rob your population of wealth by dumping insane amounts of money into an otherwise mostly useless industry(you don't really need 12…

> You need a military in order to prevent other people from bombing your country. You absolutely do not need to bomb other people, and if fact if your goal is to not get bombed, not bombing other people might be your best option for a bunch of reasons. And sometimes the best way to save lives of your people is to bomb other people. That’s very naive. Not all antagonists are rational state actors. Terrorist orgs like…

ISIS is a direct consequence of US interventions.

The Post-WWII history of the middle east mostly follows the pattern “US declares $X evil. In its fight against $X, US supports $lesserEvil with money and weapons. $Y years later $lesserEvil has used funding and weapons to grow and become $greaterEvil. US declares $W as $lesserEvil and funds them. Repeat.“

Short term that might seem smart, but do it long enough and you have a region full of well armed splitter groups, are least half of which hate you.

The UdSSR/Russia isn't blameless either, but the most notable positive long term effect of US actions in the middle east seem to be more jobs in the military-industrial-complex.

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

#297

Post by mkempe »

paganel wrote: post #151
flatline wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or accept the reality that we live in a world that feels the need to kill people. I think it would be swell to not need a military but the reality is that we do. If you have qualms about working for Google as a defense contractor, consider the implications of living in the US (or in all likelihood wherever you happen to reside). Can you justify paying your taxes? Can you justify voting for one of a handful of candida…

> Or accept the reality that we live in a world that feels the need to kill people. We dream day and night about inventing self-driving cars and about reaching Mars (which are both nice things but without which I can easily live) but we've given up on trying to stop killing each other, and worse of all, we regard it as futile. It hasn't always been like that, for example just look at the Catholic Church's push to bri…

Thank you. This reminds me of Maria Montessori's words: If one has grown up with a veneration for humanity, one will not consent to become an unconscious, destructive force to destroy humanity. Men will not lend themselves to those erroneous ways which foolishly destroy the creators and maintainers of everything that provides for their existence. They will be unwilling to use the supernatural and universal powers which they possess for a cosmic cataclysm to destroy the fruits of civilisation. Having developed a conscience and sentiment towards human life, they will be incapable of cruelty; for cruelty belongs to a dead soul.

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

#298

Post by ransom1538 »

fakescience wrote: post #31

To any Google Employees reading this. Don't worry! There are SEVERAL ways you can reduce any cognitive dissonance you might be experiencing as you read more about the evils your company is committing : + rationalization of your own behavior : "I'm not doing this work...I'm working on projects that help people. And ads. But ads are pretty neutral compared to bombing people." + rationalization of others' behavior : "Bo…

+ I choose ignorance. “Flying armed drones being trained to think. I can’t see anything going wrong here

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

#299

Post by AlexandrB »

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…

> So I guess my question to you is: 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?

This question is nonsense. We already have a system for determining who is "bad people" and doling out punishment in a fair way. It's called the criminal justice system. The drone program can't ever be "100% precise" because it's acting as the "executioner" of the "judge, jury, and executioner" that is US foreign policy. Even if it killed only the intended target, the targets are chosen through extrajudicial means.

If you want to counter that the US is "at war" with al-Qaida, I would ask: when does this "war" end? What are the victory conditions? Many (most?) of the people who were in al-Qaida in 2001 are already dead - yet the drone strikes continue.

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

#300

Post by workinthehead »

koolba wrote: post #276
pavelludiq wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a military in order to prevent other people from bombing your country. You absolutely do not need to bomb other people, and if fact if your goal is to not get bombed, not bombing other people might be your best option for a bunch of reasons[1]. If your goal is to systematically rob your population of wealth by dumping insane amounts of money into an otherwise mostly useless industry(you don't really need 12…

> You need a military in order to prevent other people from bombing your country. You absolutely do not need to bomb other people, and if fact if your goal is to not get bombed, not bombing other people might be your best option for a bunch of reasons. And sometimes the best way to save lives of your people is to bomb other people. That’s very naive. Not all antagonists are rational state actors. Terrorist orgs like…

I think you're the naive one. How do you think ISIS got started?
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