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Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

#71

Post by dec0dedab0de »

BrenBarn wrote: post #53
mananaysiempre wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most suggestions of this nature fail to explain how they will deal with the problem of people just seeing there’s no point in trying for more. On a personal level, I’ve heard people from Norway describe this problem for personal income tax—at some point (notably below a typical US senior software engineer’s earnings) the amount of work you need to put in for the marginal post-tax krone is so high it’s just demotivati…

> Most suggestions of this nature fail to explain how they will deal with the problem of people just seeing there’s no point in trying for more. On a personal level, I’ve heard people from Norway describe this problem for personal income tax—at some point (notably below a typical US senior software engineer’s earnings) the amount of work you need to put in for the marginal post-tax krone is so high it’s just demotiva…

And the middle ground is to only enforce it on corporations in exchange for the protections given to the owners.

Want to make more? then take personal risk.

Re: Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

#72

Post by Etheryte »

causal wrote: post #27

One of my chief worries about LLMs for intelligence agencies is the ability to scale textual analysis. Previously there at least had to be an agent taking an interest in you; today an LLM could theoretically read all text you've ever touched and flag anything from legal violations to political sentiments.

This has already been possible long before LLMs came along. I also doubt that an LLM is the best tool for this at scale, if you're talking about sifting through billions of messages it gets too expensive very fast.

Re: Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

#73

Post by nirav72 »

a_shovel wrote: post #2

I initially thought that this was an announcement for a new pledge and thought, "they're going to forget about this the moment it's convenient." Then I read the article and realized, "Oh, it's already convenient." Google is a megacorp, and while megacorps aren't fundamentally "evil" (for some definitions of evil), they are fundamentally unconcerned with goodness or morality, and any appearance that they are is purely…

They’re not evil, they’re amoral and are designed to maximize profits for their investors. Evil is subjective.

Re: Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

#74

Post by atlasunshrugged »

croes wrote: post #64
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #51

I'm guessing this will be a somewhat controversial view here, but I think this is net good. The world is more turbulent than at any other time in my life, there is war in Europe, and the U.S. needs every advantage it can get to improve its defense. Companies like Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, can and should be working with the government on defense projects -- I would much rather the Department of Defense have access to…

> the U.S. needs every advantage it can get to improve its defense That’s one of the reasons for the turbulent times. Let’s face the truth, most of the defense can easily be used for offense and given the state of online security every progress gets into the wrong hands. Maybe it’s time to pause to make it more difficult for those wrong hands.

I guess you could put that on the U.S.'s plate and no doubt America has caused many issues around the world, but I think in generally its a good actor. Biggest conflicts today: Ukraine -- I would squarely put this on Russia, nothing to do with the U.S.; Sudan -- Maybe lack of knowledge, but I don't think it's fair to place much responsibility on the U.S. (esp relative to other actors); ditto DRC/Rwanda

Yes, many defensive uses of technologies can be used for offense. When I say defense, I also include offense there as I don't believe you can just have a defensive posture alone to maintain one's defense, you need deterrence too. Personally I'm quite happy to see many in Silicon Valley embrace defense-tech and build missiles (ex. recent YC co), munitions, and dual-use tech. The world is a scary and dangerous place, and awful people will take advantage of the weakness of others if they can. Maybe I'm biased because I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, but I much prefer the U.S. with all our faults to another actor like China or Russia being dominant

Re: Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

#75

Post by nprateem »

Clamchop wrote: post #44

At what point does a public promise carry any legal weight whatsoever? If it carries none, then why not leave it in place and lie? If it carries some, for how long and who has standing to sue? Genuine questions. Unlike "don't be evil," this promise has a very narrow and clear interpretation. It would be nice if companies weren't able to just kinda say whatever when it's expedient.

Because then investors won't invest.

Re: Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

#78

Post by Retric »

ericmay wrote: post #47
Retric wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while megacorps aren't fundamentally "evil" (for some definitions of evil), I think megacorps being evil is universal. It tends to be corrupt cop evil vs serial killer evil, but being willing to do anything for money has historically been categorized as evil behavior. That doesn’t mean society would be better or worse off without them, but it would be interesting to see a world where companies pay vastly higher tax…

My problem with this take is that you forget, the corporations are made up of people, so in order for the corporation to be evil you have to take into account the aggregate desires and decision making of the employees and shareholders and, frankly, call them all evil. Calling them evil is kind of a silly thing to do anyway, but you can not divorce the actions of a company from those who run and support it, and I woul…

> made up of people

People making meaningful decisions at mega corporations aren’t a random sample of the population, they are self selected to care a great deal about money and or power.

Honestly if you wanted to filter the general population to quietly discover who was evil I’d have a hard time finding something more effective. It doesn’t guarantee everyone is actually evil, but actually putting your kids first is a definite hindrance.

The morality of the average employee on the other hand is mostly irrelevant. They aren’t setting policies and if they dislike something they just get replaced.

Re: Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

#79

Post by r00fus »

dylan604 wrote: post #60
a_shovel wrote: post #2

I initially thought that this was an announcement for a new pledge and thought, "they're going to forget about this the moment it's convenient." Then I read the article and realized, "Oh, it's already convenient." Google is a megacorp, and while megacorps aren't fundamentally "evil" (for some definitions of evil), they are fundamentally unconcerned with goodness or morality, and any appearance that they are is purely…

What is Googs going to do, leave money on the table? And if Googs doesn't do it, someone else will, so it might as well be them that makes money for their shareholders. Technically, couldn't activist shareholders come together and claim by not going after this market the leadership should be replaced for those that would? After all, share prices is the only metric that matters

So "if I don't steal it someone else will"? I'd rate that as evil.
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