241–250 of 567 posts
Dollar short and a day late. The future of the US tech industry belongs to those who weren't interested in performative woke nonsense like this during the last decade.
How is it woke nonsense to not want to create a weapon that probabilistically determines if a civilian looks close enough like a bad guy to missle strike them?
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Who should develop autonomous weapons?
Who should develop biological weapons? Chemical weapons? Nuclear weapons? Ideally no one, and if the cost / expertise is so niche that only a handful of sophisticated actors could possibly actually do it, then in fact (by way of enforceable treaty) no one.
> enforceable treaty
How would you enforce it after you get nuked?
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Who should develop autonomous weapons?
Who should develop biological weapons? Chemical weapons? Nuclear weapons? Ideally no one, and if the cost / expertise is so niche that only a handful of sophisticated actors could possibly actually do it, then in fact (by way of enforceable treaty) no one.
Anyone who wants to establish deterrence against superiors or peers, and open up options for handling weaker opponents.
> enforceable treaty
Such a thing does not exist. International affairs are and will always be in a state of anarchy. If at some point they aren't, then there is no "international" anymore.
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Palantir exists, this would just be competition. It's not like Google is the only company capable of creating autonomous weapons so if they abstain the world is saved. They just want a piece of the pie. The problem is the pie comes with dead babies, but if you forget that part it's alright.
Palantir doesn't make autonomous weapons, they sell SQL queries and have an evil-sounding name because it recruits juniors who think the name is cool. Might be thinking of Anduril.
Look it up.
Why on earth would a for profit company refuse a potential line of profit? They already dumped "do no evil" many years ago and they are now all in on fuck the poor and fuck the rest: I'm making profits and all is fine. Google makes money and they don't appear to care how - its all about the money.
On the one hand I think they were afraid many of their employees might protest again like they have in the past, signaling that Google isn't that awesome, progressive place everybody should work. This would mean they could be potentially losing some of the top notch SV talent that they are in constant competition with from other companies.
On the other hand, they've made it clear they aren't above firing employees who do protest as they just did when 28 employees were fired over the recent Nimbus Project contract worth an estimated $1.2B dollars with Israel:
They staged sit-in protests in Google's offices in Silicon Valley, New York City and Seattle – more than 100 protestors showed up. A day later, Google fired Montes and 27 other employees who are part of the No Tech for Apartheid group.
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/19/1245757317/google-worker-fire...
I think they try too hard to tow the line between the two, but like you said, its clear they're really all about the money.
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In WWII neither side used poison gas. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Excuse me, what?
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I don't buy that argument. There are things Google does better than competitors, so them doing an evil thing means they are doing it better. Also, they could be spending those resources on something less evil.
Remember when the other AI companies wanted ClosedAI to stop "for humanity's sake" when all it meant was for them the catch up? None of these companies are "good". They all know that as soon as one company does it, they all must follow, so why not lead?
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Tell Putin. He will entertain no such inhibitions.
We have Putin at home, he spent the past weekend making populist noises about annexing his neighbours over bullshit pretenses. I'm sure this sounds like a big nothingburger from the perspective of, you know, people he isn't threatening. How can you excuse that behaviour? How can you think someone like that can be trusted with any weapons? How naive and morally bankrupt do you have to be to build a gun for that kind o…
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It’s my military too and I believe the US military does many, many evil things that I want no part of.
"We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us"