31–40 of 86 posts
With the recent uproar inside Google against Maven, it is obvious that Pentagon is going to have difficult time. Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532112 Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17202179 Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone…
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"kinetic energy" is such a euphemism for killing people. I think a lot of people just have a problem with the military deciding who is innocent and who isn't and killing people of other countries without a declaration of war & without a trial.
Granted, much of that stuff is arranged in the form of compounds that contain people, or is stored on such compounds.
There are a few steps to "deciding who is innocent", but the big steps are Step 1: the President decides that the military can start making spot decisions like "that guy just shot me" within a specific set of circumstances. Step 2: "that guy just shot me! I'm shooting back!"
Better military technology improves step #2. It also improves subtler cases like "can I shoot this guy" / "does he have a weapon?" / "yes he totally does [false]" / "ok shoot him" -- by allowing the supervisor in this case to confirm what he's being told, before he gives the go-ahead.
But step #1 is the biggie. As soon as the President says that the military can go to a place and kill people, it gets very dangerous for the people there. Apart from turning the entire planet into a panopticon, I don't think technology can change this much.
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"kinetic energy" is such a euphemism for killing people. I think a lot of people just have a problem with the military deciding who is innocent and who isn't and killing people of other countries without a declaration of war & without a trial.
corrected, thank you. I agree with you more than you think. Please vote.
With the recent uproar inside Google against Maven, it is obvious that Pentagon is going to have difficult time. Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532112 Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17202179 Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone…
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Even if in the world where the military does pay salaries on par with the Google farm, very few people will make the switch. The military would have to pay likely an unreasonable amount premium to get any appreciable amount of people because many have an aversion to the military industrial complex. And for good reason too I might add.
People want to work on things that will help change the world and improve the quality of lives of other people, not make it easier to kill. You can argue that working on B2B software contributes little to improving humanity, but at the very least, it isn't actively harming anyone.
And the examples of moonshot technologies that are being developed in fields like cancer treatment, curing aging, self driving vehicles, etc. which are being made possible due to innovations in places like Silicon Valley should show you that technology can and is being used to change the world for the better.
Technology at the end of the day is a force multiplier that I would hope is directed towards purposes not devoted to zero sum games like waging war.
With the recent uproar inside Google against Maven, it is obvious that Pentagon is going to have difficult time. Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532112 Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17202179 Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone…
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Let's say a technology could be developed that allowed your government (wherever you are) to kill any person with almost zero cost and no chance of detection. Would it be moral to aid in its development?
If it wasn't for WWII or the risk of falling behind competitors, should those scientists and engineers have developed the atomic bomb?
With the recent uproar inside Google against Maven, it is obvious that Pentagon is going to have difficult time. Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532112 Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17202179 Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone…
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Good points, At the same time, reducing the cost of killing people and destroying things (which is a military's legitimate job) makes it more likely those actions will be ordered by political leaders. Let's say a technology could be developed that allowed your government (wherever you are) to kill any person with almost zero cost and no chance of detection. Would it be moral to aid in its development? If it wasn't fo…
oh yeah, I remember that Hitman mission.
"Would it be morally justified for an assassin to kill me?" is a good question to add to the project-acceptance checklist.
With the recent uproar inside Google against Maven, it is obvious that Pentagon is going to have difficult time. Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532112 Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17202179 Google Won't Renew Contract for Project Maven, Pentagon Drone…
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If Google helps Pentagon, then it no moral right to expand in Russia & China (I know about censored google search prpject), unless there are agreements.
I say it again if Silicon valley wants to be called a place where talented individuals of any nationality can stay & work for advancement of technology, then it must not help Pentagon.
Let Pentagon develop its own AI technology.
There would be no Silicon Valley without the military industrial complex. Period. But I think there are problems with getting too close to the Pentagon and then trying to operate internationally as a purported neutral information platform.
While I mostly agree with you on a historical basis, I don't agree with you on a theoretical basis. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. The military invented a lot of things "first", or at least provided the use-case and funding for a lot of things. But that doesn't necessarily and always mean that people couldn't have invented something without military funding and uses in mind. For example, the military probably invented th…