Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 567 posts

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

#301

Post by tmnvdb »

pixl97 wrote: post #288
tmnvdb wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sentiment ignores the reality on the ground in favor of performative ideological purity - civilians are already getting blown up all the time by systems that do not even attempt to make any distinction between civilians and soldiers: artillery shells, mortars, landmines, rockets, etc.

And indiscriminate has a cost that can slow people from using them. Imagine you have a weapon that can find and kill all the 'bad guys'. Would you not be in a morally compromised position if you didn't use it? You're letting innocents die every moment you don't. * warning definitions of bad guys may differ leading to further conflict.

The logic of this argument implies we should develop weapons with maximal collateral damage to deter their usage.

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

#304

Post by FeteCommuniste »

saagarjha wrote: post #284
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically the US has never dropped nukes, those were atomic bombs. Second, don’t understand how the atomic bomb argument makes sense. Germany was developing them and would have used them if it got there first. Are you suggesting the US really is truly the only nation that would ever have used atomic weapons? That if Japan made it first they would have spared China or the US?

Care to explain how an atomic bomb is not a nuke?

Atom bombs are definitely nukes. Maybe the GP was thinking of thermonuclear (fission-fusion) weapons.

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

#305

Post by mkolodny »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #148

I want to be upset over this in an exasperated expression of oddly naive "why can't we all get along?" frame of mind. I want to, because I know how I would like the world to look like, but as a species we, including myself, continually fail to disappoint when it comes nearly guaranteed self-destruction. I want to get upset over it, but I sadly recognize the reality of the why this is not surprising to anyone. We actu…

A vague “stuff is happening behind closed doors” isn’t enough of a reason to build AI weapons. If you shared a specific weapon that could only be countered with AI weapons, that might make me feel differently. But right now I can’t imagine a reason we’d need or want robots to decide who to kill.

When people talk about AI being dangerous, or possibly bringing about the end of the world, I usually disagree. But AI weapons are obviously dangerous, and could easily get out of control. Their whole point is that they are out of control.

The issue isn’t that AI weapons are “evil”. It’s that value alignment isn’t a solved problem, and AI weapons could kill people we wouldn’t want them to kill.

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

#306

Post by astrange »

switchbak wrote: post #250
dark_glass wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us"

And these same organizations fuel conflicts that actively make the USA less safe. These organizations can both do great things (hostage rescues) and terrible things (initiating coups), and it’s upon the citizenry to ensure that these forces are put to use only where justified. That is to say almost never.

We've stopped South American coups more recently than we've initiated them. (in the last few years, in Brazil and Bolivia)

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

#307

Post by nerdponx »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #287
chubot wrote: post #261

It is interesting how these companies shift with the political winds Just like Meta announced some changes around the time of inauguration, I'm sure Google management has noticed the AI announcements, and they don't want to be perceived in a certain way by the current administration I think the truth is more in the middle (there is tons of disagreement within the company), but they naturally care about how they are p…

I would say it's natural. Their one and only incentive isn't as they are trying to tell you "make a word better place" or similiar awkward corpo charade but to make a profit. That's a purpose why companies are created and they are always following it.

I see it as the natural extension of the Chomsky "manufacturing consent" propaganda model. The people in key positions of power and authority know who their masters are, and everyone below them falls into line.

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

#308

Post by sangnoir »

stainablesteel wrote: post #229

It's not like they're above lying, why do they even care to update this?

Everything is securities fraud - they'd likely be sued by shareholders. Some individuals and institutions are picky about the symbols in their portfolio for religious or moral reasons, and would not appreciate being deceived into investing in a company they consider engaging in "harmful" or morally objectionable activities.

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

#309

Post by janalsncm »

aradox66 wrote: post #269
stainablesteel wrote: post #229

It's not like they're above lying, why do they even care to update this?

Would it be too far out there to imagine that the LLMs they were training for weapons systems knew it violated their rules and were resisting compliance? The alignment-faking research seems to indicate that LLMs exercise of this kind of reasoning.

Depends on the weapons system but it would probably not be an LLM, it would be a neural network trained to locate and identify people in a video for example.

And even if it was, they wouldn’t tell the system it was part of old non-evil Google.

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

#310

Post by scarface_74 »

burningChrome wrote: post #245
gerdesj wrote: post #231

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.

>> Why on earth would a for profit company refuse a potential line of profit? 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.…

As if anyone working for an adtech company thought they were changing the world for the better.

I’m sure they are clutching their pearls while waiting for their money to be deposited into their bank account and their RSUs to be deposited into their brokerage accounts.

Yes I did a stint at BigTech. But I didn’t lie to myself and think the company I worked for was above reproach as my adult son literally peed in bottles while delivering packages for the same company.

Post reply on HN