361–370 of 527 posts
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…
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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…
/s/guns/drones
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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…
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> 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.
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> - 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.
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> 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…
Your technology will ultimately be used to kill people. Bear in mind that the US electorate showed itself capable of crowning a unhinged TV show host as its commander in chief.
Why US citizens hate their army so much? All i know is that if google announced it's working with our army on some AI projects, the response would be overwhelmingly positive, and people would praise Google for that. (I'm from Israel if you're wondering) And I think US are a minority in that the citizens despise their own government and army this much. Which really makes you wonder what's the whole point of democracy…
Other citizens respect and value it.
Unfortunately, many of the former group are also dedicated liberals, and many of the latter group are also dedicated conservatives. Given the state of the culture war in the US today, its difficult to determine how much of any individual's opinion on Project Maven is driven by their opinions as an individual, and how much is driven by their allegiance to one their side in the culture war.
It doesn't help that the political right has made veneration of military service one of their core principles. The left's claim is that veneration of military service is used as a psychological wedge to lever support for military action as well, and they are probably right (for some fraction of the population).
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The military's purpose in modern times is not to bring peace, it is to preserve peace. I find it an important distinction, as "bringing" peace sounds like the military's purpose is to force outsiders who may be viewed as unpeaceful to adopt new culture which is viewed as more peaceful. To "preserve" peace implies, at least to me, that the military is focused on the peace of the home population, and may take action el…
It's worth adding that this idea is why we have the somewhat paradoxical concept of laws of armed conflict. One of the express goals of things like the Genvea conventions is to ensure the prompt re-establishment of peace. You don't end war by starting with the assumption that there aren't and won't be anymore before you're successful - or you would've been already.
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> 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…
Working for military by building superior exo-skeletons and armor/weapons for soldiers as well as gear carrying robot-dogs is pretty okay if one realizes the need for military. Then these soldiers go on site in another country risk their lives and take out specific bad guys without shooting too many bystanders. You can then argue whether those were really bad guys and whether that specific operation needed to be carr…
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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…
See, if your military or government is killing people, and you work for them, assist them, or let them, you are also killing people. We have a saying: "Imagine it's war and nobody shows up".
I fear this discussion is about if you follow the narrative that US military drone strikes are a purely defensive measure, unavoidable, or serve some greater cause. Large parts of the general public outside of the US at least are of the opinion the US military and associated mercenary companies have been (and still are?) killing (innocent) people on the other side of the world, for dubios reasons. Helping them build weapons, under this assumption, equals helping them kill people.
Even the most accurate AK-47 is intended to kill people.