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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

#311

Post by Lennie »

slg wrote: post #191
marklgr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Drones can be produced and deployed in higher quantities than aircraft Once again that is a political issue. If someone finds a way to suddenly reduce the cost of bullets by 50%, the response from the military shouldn’t be to buy twice the number of bullets. >with AI you won't necessarily need one man behind each drone The article denies that is how the AI would be used.

Just a matter of time.

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

#312

Post by barrkel »

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…

Because better weapons - especially, autonomous weapons - lowers the barriers to starting wars. Instead of starting wars for defense purposes, they get started for resource control reasons, or even for business reasons, for the well-connected.

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

#313

Post by barrkel »

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…

Drones are a worse weapon than a man on the ground with a gun, because they have asymmetric risks. The country with the drones doesn't risk civilian backlash from casualties. They get to start wars without much political pushback. And that means they can start wars for less justifiable reasons.

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

#314

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #306
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. Same for a hospital (patching up wounded enemy combatants) or a school (educating future insurgents). Or a nursery, football stadium, shopping mall, etc etc...

don't be so flippant. That's not at all what I was saying.

I'm not being flippant. You commented that there might be legitimate reasons to bomb a wedding. Well, there are similar reasons to bomb hospitals etc, yet we don't accept that this should be done.

If I misunderstood your original comment, please clarify.

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

#315

Post by indescions_2018 »

There must be some hard data. Looking back over the last 40+ years. Were research institutions that divested from defense funding during the Vietnam era adversely impacted. Perhaps short term. But on long scales there has been more than adequate consumer and private sector demand to compensate.

Politically, the company could face a backlash in the form of antitrust scrutiny over search monopoly. Which Alphabet seems to be anticipating as historical inevitability. With the foresight even that perhaps breaking up large trusts is great for startup innovation ;)

But it raises the general question. If given the option of taking $ to do basic science. Regardless of the funding entities motives. Do you do it anyway? An argument can be made to always take the money and do the science. You don't know what the world will look like in 10 years. Drone AI used for surgical strikes today will probably be civilian transferred to AgTech and planting seeds tomorrow. And there is always the possibility of a breakthrough.

Among the many great examples are the Human Genome Project, the Manhattan Project and DARPA Grand Challenge. Terrestrial plutonium enrichment may turn out to be the key to deep space exploration, or space based defense. Early DOE-funded genetics research was specifically interested in answering the question: can we survive radiation induced mutations from the fallout of a nuclear war? And less than two decades after a Humvee from CMU completed 8 miles on its own in the California desert we will see fleets of semi-autonomous vehicles rolling out in major cities.

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

#316

Post by fsloth »

onli wrote: post #196
mc32 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

Absolute ridiculous false dilemma. It is not that if the US hadn't chosen to invade Vietnam and to kill everything that moves someone else would have, the US just opted to do that on their own. And it was not like they were there to free the people (from whom anyway, they were not enslaved). There was no vacuum to fill, the same goes for Iraq, Afghanistan, were the US created the vacuum that was afterwards filled by…

"And that's the core of the issue, and that is why these political comments are on point... By cooperating with the imperial US military Google is directly supporting one of the most evil forces in the world"

Do you mean the US military is one of the most evil forces in the world or the US itself as a geopolitical actor?

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

#317

Post by ihsw2 »

azag0 wrote: post #292
globuous wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.”

This further reinforces the notion that the modern left has embraced essentialism, moralization, and Utopian ideology:

* reducing people to (for example and more commonly than ever) ethnic and religious identities

* turning every issue into a moral issue where decisions are separated into right and wrong with a distinct lack of nuance and thoughtful consideration

* attacking those that don't share in your Utopian ideology as irredeemable sinners that must be isolated and neutralized, lest they detract from the overarching "perfect future"

The top-most comment in this thread is obviously an extremist that lacks any interest in critically examining the multiple variables that have brought us to this situation and instead reduces it to "the American government is evil and anyone that works with it is evil by association." There are ways to affect the direction of this country (and of Google) without resorting to wholesale rejection of it on a basic level.

We are entering a dangerous territory where pogroms and cannibalization of moderates are the norm, and where extremists of all stripes are given a platform with violent oppression imposed on those calling for moderation.

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

#319

Post by barrkel »

Regardsyjc wrote: post #232
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…

I agree. I believe the only reason American civilians like us have been able to enjoy peace is because we dropped a ton of bombs to blast tiny countries out of the sky and we also have a history of fighting wars not to win, but not to lose. If Americans are willing to sacrifice their people and resources for a tiny country in the middle of nowhere, imagine what they would do to you if you attacked them or their inter…

> I believe the only reason American civilians like us have been able to enjoy peace is because we dropped a ton of bombs to blast tiny countries out of the sky

This is completely ludicrous. There is no military threat to the US beyond nukes. Nuclear weapons have obsoleted wars between great powers. Tiny countries are zero threat to the USA. They cannot invade; they can do almost nothing. At best, they can kill a few hundred individuals at a time by sponsoring terrorism, far fewer people than are killed by vehicles in an average June.

The reason the USA starts wars in far away countries is to maintain a sphere of influence and protect a philosophy of government and running economies that keeps the USA affluent via trade. It is not, in no way, about defense of the USA; if you really think that, you've been deeply hoodwinked by some military warrior code bullshit. The USA's military program is foreign policy for, ultimately, economic reasons.

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

#320

Post by Lennie »

fsloth wrote: post #265
annabellish wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the theory, yes, and to a point it's even true, but the US military is _not_ being used in this way. There is no challenger for "ultimate political power" within the US region. Their spending and investment is well beyond what is necessary to keep up with the "competition", of which there is effectively none. It is merely the continual expansion and growth of an already vastly overqualified force which hasn't…

"the US military is _not_ being used in this way." I agree to a point. US is "hooked" to war as it feeds the profits and the subsidies of the military industrial complex. Especially in the eastern mediterranean area and middle east US escapades have been hugely destabilizing. However, given the current world stage in total with such jolly players with extraterritorial ambitions as Russia and China, I would much prefe…

Let's first make the other NATO members more powerful before we keep increasing the US firepower.
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