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

gizmodo.com

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

#61

Post by kinsomo »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #58
kinsomo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is these aren't even military operations I disagree. I would call operations conducted with military equipment and with the participation of military personnel (e.g. USAF pilots) military operations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan "under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division". Feel free to click in and read what SAD does, these are assassinations, not military actions. Remember that military actions are something a government does officially, and assassinations are something denied and covered up for over a decade.

The same Wikipedia article states:

"The drones are flown by United States Air Force pilots located at an unnamed base in the United States. US Department of Defense armed drones, which also sometimes take part in strikes on terrorist targets, are flown by US Air Force pilots located at Creech Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base."

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

#62

Post by dfsegoat »

Anyone else have a problem with this? Someone else will be doing this work in place of Google, as it is inevitable that AI and defense will merge. So for those reasons, IMO, it is childish to quit and try to not assert some ethical control over something while you can.

Maybe the next co. who fills the contract will be the one where the AI engineers who quit now work?

TLDR: Get the program killed, or control it on your terms ethically. Don't pass it off on the next highest bidder.

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

#63

Post by kinsomo »

simion314 wrote: post #53
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…

So in your opinion developers and scientists are not "patriotic" enough, I disagree, if there were some threat many would try to help their country but there is no threat, this weapons are used on dubious external missions.

> So in your opinion developers and scientists are not "patriotic" enough, I disagree

Where, exactly did I say that? You're putting words in my mouth.

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

#64

Post by it_learnses »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #40
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

It's very likely if there were a legitimate threat or need for the technology, employee opinion on helping the military would likely change. China and Russia are regularly highlighted as the bogeymen in these scenarios, but how many people realistically would suggest either is likely to say... invade or fire on the United States?

False Dilemma. Direct invasion is not the only option available to a sufficiently advanced, large scale AI attack. Think of how many ways you can mess with elections, opinions, security, etc. of a target nation without being detected.

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

#65

Post by bitL »

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…

Who cares about Google? What Alphabet does, matters. A new subsidiary with strict confidentiality? They can play with optimizing company structure depending on the area of business as they like.

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

#66

Post by blackbrokkoli »

mesozoic wrote: post #52

Looks like Google is going to wound itself greatly for letting leftists take over their hiring and internal culture. Shunning real diversity of opinion and ability to reason while trying to have diversity of skin color and genitalia. It appears that the management is starting to realize the danger and fight back hopefully not too late. https://gizmodo.com/alphabet-shareholders-and-employees-want...

When you make a really specific statement, why use the super broad term "leftists"? This american pseudo-dichotomy is not helping the discussion and is just fueling partisanship...

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

#67

Post by AdamM12 »

Engineer's that were working on this should quit and form their own company to continue the work. Whether the drones can autonomously fire or not is a legislative issue. Cloud cert would be a big issue unless they can resell AWS which I believe already has it.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

mesozoic wrote: post #52

Looks like Google is going to wound itself greatly for letting leftists take over their hiring and internal culture. Shunning real diversity of opinion and ability to reason while trying to have diversity of skin color and genitalia. It appears that the management is starting to realize the danger and fight back hopefully not too late. https://gizmodo.com/alphabet-shareholders-and-employees-want...

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by irq »

cryptoz wrote: post #43
ajross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sing…

Instead of downvoting cryptoz, I encourage people to counter what he said with their own replies. The majority of his statements in this post are verifiable facts. (I do not know this person, fwiw).

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

#70

Post by cromwellian »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #56
cromwellian wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Corporations have no ethics or morals, though. Google has no conscience of it's own. Employees can perhaps keep it in check, for a while. But the notion that people have held that Google is good for society is a myth, and people are increasingly realizing it. Sure, employees may continue to protest actions like this in the future... if they find out about them. Bear in mind, a significant component of this incident i…

This is bigger than Google. Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Oracle, Palantir, et al, will take this contract next. Google isn't the only company that can run DNNs to do image classification, it's commodified now. The DoD is going to pay money to get this software, it's inevitable, just like they got the Hydrogen bomb, and ICBMs, and biological weapons. Enough people exist out there who are smart and willing to work on it for money, only it won't leak, and won't be public.

The public needs to take this event as a canary in the coal mine. Congress needs to limit AI use in the military. If it took Google to scare everyone into finally regulating this, than so be it, but there needs to be transparency and oversight and limits imposed by democracies on this, just like regulations on chemical and biological weapons.

Perhaps we need an "AI Weapons Proliferation treaty" or something. But the future of war is automated drone killing machines, they're just way cheaper to built and deploy and less risky. You can build hundreds of automated drones for the cost of one B-2 bomber, and mount a saturation offense against any defender.

People need to widen their gaze from fixation on Silicon Valley. The problem is in Washington, the problem is a $700 billion defense budget, a war on terror, and extrajudicial drone assassinations. Everyday people on HackerNews are complaining about ad tracking, navel gazing their industry, meanwhile, they silently accept their own governments tracking people and killing them with hellfire missiles. (I get that people feel helpless with respect to resisting the military industrial complex and feel they can have some say over an industry they're more closing associated with, but I'm pretty sure there's plenty of HN readers who actually favor the US military empire)

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