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Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

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Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#41

Post by droopyEyelids »

simion314 wrote: post #39
C50VGicCxmHC wrote: post #21

This will really hurt their enterprise cloud business. Google has shown to have a bunch of employees who will leak confidential discussions to the press and try to PR damage their employer. If you are a large company looking for a home, that is exactly the kind of environment you want to avoid. In addition, many of the large US companies have a military component. Examples are GE, Boeing, United Technologies. How man…

I think this was different then regular military projects because of drones, drones have a terrible reputation.

And it's not just the reputation of drones, it's taking another step towards autonomous killing machines.

Robots probably wouldn't be as bad, but the other autonomous killing machines we have are pathogens, and all countries have pretty much decided it's counterproductive to develop pathogens for warfare at this point

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#42

Post by simion314 »

aregsar wrote: post #24

While there are good intentions here, what happens if China and Russia military get ahead of US military in this technology due to us limiting ourselves

1 Do you think China will send drones and attack US citizens?

2 Google was claiming they were doing open source work, so China would have access to it anyway

3 If there are enough money in this there will be people going to work on the project, so I am sure the US will have good droning software

4 US brought this on itself with the way they used the drones , like you have the verb "droning"

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#43

Post by cryptoz »

ajross wrote: post #27
aregsar wrote: post #24

While there are good intentions here, what happens if China and Russia military get ahead of US military in this technology due to us limiting ourselves

That's where I am too. I mean, war stuff is bad, it kills people, and the US certainly isn't 100% trustworthy. At the same time... there's a real don't-rock-the-boat problem here. The last 3/4 of a century of US military dominance has been notable for a decrease in military/para-military violence on an order that humanity literally has never seen. It's not zero for sure, it's not always just, we may not always be the…

> the US certainly isn't 100% trustworthy.

The US is the most wildly insane, two-faced and upside-down country in the world right now in terms of military. The commander-in-chief routinely makes nuclear threats, actively hurts his own citizens in times of need, and seeks to decrease military stability by accelerating climate change and isolating his country from the world. The commander-in-chief lies about every single thing in his day-to-day life, as well as his political life; he is mentally unstable and not fit to serve.

The US military is 100% untrustworthy as its direct leader has shown himself to be literally insane.

> there's a real don't-rock-the-boat problem here

The US is the one rocking the boat. It has already happened and it happens daily.

> A world without a dominant US military is a world with fewer US-driven injustices. That doesn't seem like a good bet to be a "better world", though.

I disagree. That seems like a very incredibly great bet, to me. The time of US military leadership is over. That happened the day our Military Commander In Chief stood on his inauguration day and lied about the number of people in front of him.

Perhaps the US will return to a positive leading role one day, but it is not there now and it has not been for years.

All this aside, I do not agree that Google is the right place to develop US Military technology.

Edit: Additionally, the commander-in-chief of the US military also stated point blank that we may not have presidential elections any more in the future. This is not a time to champion US democracy, military might, etc.

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#44

Post by kinsomo »

simion314 wrote: post #42
aregsar wrote: post #24

While there are good intentions here, what happens if China and Russia military get ahead of US military in this technology due to us limiting ourselves

1 Do you think China will send drones and attack US citizens? 2 Google was claiming they were doing open source work, so China would have access to it anyway 3 If there are enough money in this there will be people going to work on the project, so I am sure the US will have good droning software 4 US brought this on itself with the way they used the drones , like you have the verb "droning"

> 1 Do you think China will send drones and attack US citizens?

It's not unthinkable, especially if they feel confident that they have a technological advantage that would shield them from detection or in-kind retaliation. They also have somewhat different notions of citizenship/nationality than Western countries, and they have a few diasporas they'd like to control.

> 3 If there are enough money in this there will be people going to work on the project, so I am sure the US will have good droning software

What makes you so sure of this, or that those people will have the necessary talent? Lower quality software could lead to more collateral deaths.

> 4 US brought this on itself with the way they used the drones , like you have the verb "droning"

Contemporary drone-strikes are literally just regular airstrikes: for instance, the weapons the drones use were actually developed for other military aircraft [1] [2] and adapted to drones.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition

The only real difference is that there's no pilot in the plane, so less risk he dies in a crash. And I say crash because most of the drone-strikes happened in places where there were few hostile anti-aircraft weapons to actually shoot anything down. Most of the pilot risk would have been from mechanical problems and human error.

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#45

Post by cromwellian »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #12

The thing I think everyone needs to remember for the future is that Google is only backing off on Maven because of the bad PR. They aren't suddenly growing a conscience, and you can be sure that given the chance to secretly get involved in a horribly unethical program for hundreds of millions of dollars is still definitely an option for them.

That may be a component, but IMHO, pronouncements and explanations haven't diminished employee objections to say the least.

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#46

Post by ocdtrekkie »

kinsomo wrote: post #44
simion314 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 Do you think China will send drones and attack US citizens? 2 Google was claiming they were doing open source work, so China would have access to it anyway 3 If there are enough money in this there will be people going to work on the project, so I am sure the US will have good droning software 4 US brought this on itself with the way they used the drones , like you have the verb "droning"

> 1 Do you think China will send drones and attack US citizens? It's not unthinkable, especially if they feel confident that they have a technological advantage that would shield them from detection or in-kind retaliation. They also have somewhat different notions of citizenship/nationality than Western countries, and they have a few diasporas they'd like to control. > 3 If there are enough money in this there will b…

No, the primary difference is that we deploy drones in areas we are not engaged in warfare, and to assassinate various individuals in foreign countries where we are not at war. We could not and would not deploy manned aircraft to do these jobs.

We do not deploy F-35s to assassinate people in Pakistan. But we've been deploying drones there since 2004. Note that a key issue here is that the drone strikes aren't even military actions: They're controlled by the CIA.

There is no technical difference with drones, the issue is entirely in how they are used. This is what makes your arguments about the weaponry being the same mostly irrelevant.

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#47

Post by Rebelgecko »

mtgx wrote: post #2

I imagine that in the 2-3 years this contract run, Google shared most of what they needed to share with the Pentagon in order to catch-up to the company's current AI capabilities.

I doubt that. It's what, a $9 million contract? Assuming Google is making a profit or at least breaking even, I'd doubt there's more than 15 or so people working on this full time.

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#48

Post by kinsomo »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #46
kinsomo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 Do you think China will send drones and attack US citizens? It's not unthinkable, especially if they feel confident that they have a technological advantage that would shield them from detection or in-kind retaliation. They also have somewhat different notions of citizenship/nationality than Western countries, and they have a few diasporas they'd like to control. > 3 If there are enough money in this there will b…

No, the primary difference is that we deploy drones in areas we are not engaged in warfare, and to assassinate various individuals in foreign countries where we are not at war. We could not and would not deploy manned aircraft to do these jobs. We do not deploy F-35s to assassinate people in Pakistan. But we've been deploying drones there since 2004. Note that a key issue here is that the drone strikes aren't even mi…

> No, the primary difference is that we deploy drones in areas we are not engaged in warfare, and to assassinate various individuals in foreign countries where we are not at war.

The US hasn't been officialy "at war" in a long time. I think the last one was World War II.

> We do not deploy F-35s to assassinate people in Pakistan.

Of course not: F-35s are more expensive to operate and I'm not sure they've even attained the level of readiness to attempt such a mission.

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#49

Post by squarefoot »

aregsar wrote: post #24

While there are good intentions here, what happens if China and Russia military get ahead of US military in this technology due to us limiting ourselves

If we reduce everything to being ahead of a potential enemy, then we soon get to a point where the solution of all problems is a single deadly upfront attack.

Those technologies aren't for defense; every nation in the world throws loads of money to military expenses -including those countries who have zero chances of being ahead of any other- for a single reason: war is a very profitable business. Everything else is propaganda.

Re: Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program

#50

Post by ocdtrekkie »

kinsomo wrote: post #48
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the primary difference is that we deploy drones in areas we are not engaged in warfare, and to assassinate various individuals in foreign countries where we are not at war. We could not and would not deploy manned aircraft to do these jobs. We do not deploy F-35s to assassinate people in Pakistan. But we've been deploying drones there since 2004. Note that a key issue here is that the drone strikes aren't even mi…

> No, the primary difference is that we deploy drones in areas we are not engaged in warfare, and to assassinate various individuals in foreign countries where we are not at war. The US hasn't been officialy "at war" in a long time. I think the last one was World War II. > We do not deploy F-35s to assassinate people in Pakistan. Of course not: F-35s are more expensive to operate and I'm not sure they've even attaine…

The point is these aren't even military operations, I am fairly confident it'd be literally illegal for the Air Force to assassinate people in the manner we've been using our drone program.
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