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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

#321

Post by janalsncm »

worik wrote: post #257
uejfiweun wrote: post #154

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.

The future of the tech industry belongs to China

Future? The present day tech industry belongs to China unless you narrowly define it as software or pharmaceuticals.

https://itif.org/publications/2024/09/16/china-is-rapidly-be...

For example the most advanced batteries in the world are designed and manufactured in China.

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

#322

Post by uejfiweun »

zeroCalories wrote: post #238
uejfiweun wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palantir, for one?

By what measure? Google has a market cap that's 10x Palantir, and the gap in revenue/profit is even more massive. They aren't in the same league at all.

The measure is stock returns in the last 5 years. The whole point of public companies is to generate wealth for shareholders and Google just simply isn't really delivering on the same level as Palantir.

In fact, when you look at the last decade of Google saying they're an "AI first" company and literally inventing transformers, and look at what their stock price has done and how they've performed in relation to other major companies involved in this current AI spring, there is simply no way not to be disappointed.

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

#323

Post by scottyah »

Swannie wrote: post #256
dgfitz wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you imagine how the entire world would look if they took truth serum for an entire year, how different the world might be? Lies run the planet, and it stinks.

Yes, have you watched The Wheel of Time? Better to read the books... the characters bound to tell the truth are experts in double meanings. Successful politicans and sociopaths are experts in double meanings. "I will not drop bombs on Acmeland." Instead, I will send missiles. "At this point in time, we do not intend to end the tariffs." The intent will change when conditions change, which is forecast next week. "We a…

Human's short context windows with too many areas to research and stay up to date on is why I don't believe any version of Democracy I've seen can succeed, and the only real positive to some kind of ASI government/policing (once we solve the whole universal judgement system issue). I'd love a world where you would be assisted through tax season, ill-intentioned drivers were properly incentivized to not risk others' lives, and you could at least be made aware before breaking laws.

Eliminating the need to lie/misguide people to sway them would be such a crazy world.

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

#324

Post by xdennis »

osmsucks wrote: post #274
darth_avocado wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weapons inherently aren’t evil, which is why everyone has kitchen knives. People use weapons to do evil. The problem with building AI weapons is that eventually it will be in the hands of people who are morally bankrupt and therefore will use them to do evil.

The difference there is that a knife has some obvious, benign use cases. Smart weapons targeting has only one use case, and it's to do harm to others.

AI weapons do have benign use cases: harming enemies.

When China attacks with AI weapons do you expect the free world to fight back armed with moral superiority? No. We need even more lethal AI weapons.

Mutual assured destruction has worked so far for nukes.

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

#325

Post by greenavocado »

siltcakes wrote: post #277
tmnvdb wrote: post #143

Good, this idea that all weapons are evil is an insane luxury belief.

Do you see nothing wrong with the same company that makes YouTube Kids making killer AI? I think creating weapons is often evil. I think companies that have consumer brands should never make weapons, at the very least it's white washing what's really going on. At worst, they can leverage their media properties for propaganda purposes, spy on your Gmail and Maps usage and act as a vector for the most nefarious cyber t…

The same company that brings you cute cartoons for kids might also develop technologies with military applications, but that doesn't make them inherently "evil." It just makes them a microcosm of humanity's duality: the same species that created the Mona Lisa also invented napalm.

Should companies with consumer brands never make weapons? Sure, and while we're at it, let's ban knives because they can be used for both chopping vegetables and stabbing people. The issue isn't the technology itself. It's how it's regulated, controlled, and used. And as for cyber terrorism? That's a problem with bad actors, not with the tools themselves.

So, by all means, keep pointing out the hypocrisy of a company that makes YouTube Kids and killer AI. Just don't pretend like you're not benefiting from the same duality every time you use a smartphone or the internet which don't forget is a technology born, ironically, from military research.

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

#326

Post by redmajor12 »

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-assisted_targeting_in_the...

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

#327

Post by tmnvdb »

siltcakes wrote: post #299
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.

The reality on the ground is that one of the very first uses of AI weapons was to target civilians in Gaza: > Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Lavender is not an autonomous weapon but if you want to seriously consider if Lavender is a good thing (I am undecided) you need to compare the effect of this operation with Lavender and the effect of doing the same operation without the Lavender system. Otherwise you run the risk of making arguments that in the end just boil down to 'weapons bad'.

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

#328

Post by gosub100 »

ignoramous wrote: post #167
CamperBob2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell Putin. He will entertain no such inhibitions.

> no such inhibitions Propping up evil figure/regime/ideology (Bolsheviks/Communists) to justify remorseless evilness (Concentration camps/Nuclear bomb) isn't new nor unique, but particularly predictable.

nukes saved countless US lives being lost to a regime who brought us into it. And it's incalculable how many wars they have prevented.

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

#329

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

dgfitz wrote: post #150
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…

Could you imagine how the entire world would look if they took truth serum for an entire year, how different the world might be? Lies run the planet, and it stinks.

If you can’t cope with the lies, what makes you think you’d cope with the truth? Which I guarantee you is magnitudes of order more horrifying.

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

#330

Post by scottyah »

siltcakes wrote: post #317
mkolodny wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 weap…

I agree. I don't think there's really a case for the US developing any offensive weapons. Geographically, economically and politically, we are not under any sort of credible threat. Maybe AI based missile defense or something, but we already have a completely unjustified arsenal of offensive weapons and a history of using them amorally.

Without going too far into it, if we laid down all offensive weapons the cartels in Mexico would be inside US borders and killing people within a day.
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