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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

#381

Post by callc »

karaterobot wrote: post #10

Is this more or less ethical than OpenAI getting a DoD contract to deploy models on the battlefield less than a year after saying that would never happen, with the excuse being well we only meant certain kinds of warfare or military purposes, obviously . I guess my question is, isn't there something more honest about an open heel-turn, like Google has made, compared to one where you maintain the fiction that you're s…

At least Google employees will sign petitions and do things that follow a moral code.

OpenAI is sneaky slimey and headed by a psycho narcissist. Makes Pichia looks like a saint.

Ethically, it’s the same. But if someone was pointing a gun at me I’d rather have someone with some empathy behind the trigger rather than the personification of a company that bleeds high level execs and… insert many problems here

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

#382

Post by LoganDark »

portaouflop wrote: post #351
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.

Put LSD in the drinking water

This is actually a plot point of Unsong https://unsongbook.com

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

#383

Post by greenchair »

iteratethis wrote: post #137
daft_pink wrote: post #135

I feel like we’re just in that period of Downtown Abbey where everyone is waiting for the World War I to start. Everyone can feel that it’s coming and no one can do anything about it. Reality is in a war between the West vs Russia/Iran/North Korea/China whomever we end up fighting, we’re going to do whatever we can so the Western civilization and soldiers survive and win. Ultimately Google is a western company and if…

The reason war may be coming is because the West is falling apart. The US is isolating itself and bullying its allies. Alternative powers wanting to do something expansive never had a better moment in time to do so. There was no war forthcoming between an integrated West and any other power. War is coming because there no longer is a West.

now that the adults are back in charge, we should be good for a few more years at least.

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

#384

Post by olalonde »

That feels like PR / virtue signaling. AI has the potential to significantly reduce the human cost of war in two ways: by removing soldiers from direct combat and by enabling precision strikes which minimize collateral damage. Over time, robot-soldiers will surpass human effectiveness, making it increasingly irrational to send people into harm's way. In that world, conflicts would shift toward being decided by technological superiority - who has the better or more advanced systems - rather than by which side has more human lives to sacrifice. We could even see one day wars with no human casualties.

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

#385

Post by daft_pink »

iteratethis wrote: post #137
daft_pink wrote: post #135

I feel like we’re just in that period of Downtown Abbey where everyone is waiting for the World War I to start. Everyone can feel that it’s coming and no one can do anything about it. Reality is in a war between the West vs Russia/Iran/North Korea/China whomever we end up fighting, we’re going to do whatever we can so the Western civilization and soldiers survive and win. Ultimately Google is a western company and if…

The reason war may be coming is because the West is falling apart. The US is isolating itself and bullying its allies. Alternative powers wanting to do something expansive never had a better moment in time to do so. There was no war forthcoming between an integrated West and any other power. War is coming because there no longer is a West.

The reasons are not the main focus here. The fact is that China's aggressive stance on Taiwan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the alignment with China, North Korea, and Iran are leading to military buildups and alliances worldwide. Google, being a company founded and controlled by Americans, is likely to support the effort if a war occurs, rather than remain passive while their friends and family's children are dying.

Today people have differing views of nuclear weapons, but people who fought near Japan and survived believe the bomb saved their life.

It's easy to pretend you don't have a sides when there is peace, but in this environment google's going to take a side.

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

#386

Post by oneplane »

olalonde wrote: post #384

That feels like PR / virtue signaling. AI has the potential to significantly reduce the human cost of war in two ways: by removing soldiers from direct combat and by enabling precision strikes which minimize collateral damage. Over time, robot-soldiers will surpass human effectiveness, making it increasingly irrational to send people into harm's way. In that world, conflicts would shift toward being decided by techno…

AI can also be used to say "it wasn't us, the computer did that" and pretend it's not your fault when you kill a bunch of civilians.

As for sending people in harm's way: if that were the effect, it would only apply to those "with AI". In essence, AI becomes a weapon you use to threaten someone with war since your own cost will be low and their cost will be high.

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

#387

Post by jongjong »

Retric wrote: post #26
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…

> 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…

Agreed, I think part of it boils down to the concept of 'limited liability' itself which is a euphemism for 'the right to carry out some degree of evil without consequence.'

Also, scale plays a significant part as well. Any high-exposure organization which operates on a global scale has access to an extremely large pool of candidates to staff its offices... And such candidate pools necessarily include a large number of any given personas... Including large numbers of ethically-challenged individuals and criminals. Without an interview process which actively selects for 'ethics', the ethically-challenged and criminal individuals have a significant upper-hand in getting hired and then later wedging themselves into positions of power within the company.

Criminals and ethically-challenged individuals have a bigger risk appetite than honest people so they are more likely to succeed within a corporate hierarchy which is founded on 'positive thinking' and 'turning a blind eye'. On a global corporate playing field, there is a huge amount of money to be made in hiding and explaining away irregularities.

A corporate employee can do something fraudulent and then hold onto their jobs while securing higher pay, simply by signaling to their employer that they will accept responsibility if the scheme is exposed; the corporate employer is happy to maintain this arrangement and feign ignorance while extracting profits so long as the scheme is kept under wraps... Then if the scheme is exposed, the corporations will swiftly throw the corporate employee under the bus in accordance to the 'unspoken agreement'.

The corporate structure is extremely effective at deflecting and dissipating liability away from itself (and especially its shareholders) and onto citizens/taxpayers, governments and employees (as a last layer of defense). The shareholder who benefits the most from the activities of the corporation is fully insulated from the crimes of the corporation. The scapegoats are lined up, sandwiched between layers of plausible deniability in such a way that the shareholder at the end of the line can always claim complete ignorance and innocence.

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

#388

Post by energy123 »

asdfman123 wrote: post #313
energy123 wrote: post #240

Many will hate to hear this but the only solution is one world government or at least a unipolar order that reduces the survival need to participate in arms races. Arms race dynamics between nations will be the end of our species.

I think having nations competing against each other is a good thing. Governments become corrupted and collapse: it would be a shame if the only world government fell into the hands of a dictator. That being said the only way I could imagine we'd get a single world order is one country dominating everyone else, just like superpowers and regional powers dominate their respective parts of the globe. Never ever ever are…

Would you have said the same thing to people living in warring tribal societies if they hoped that local tribes would cease existing and coalesce together into a single nation state? That's bad because it reduces competition, right? But overall it was very good because tribal conflict and barriers to movement and trade act as a massive tax on anything we would both call good.

Unprecedented levels of peace in Europe happened not because of competing nation states, but in spite of that competition. It was the unipolar control exerted by the US and the destruction of the Soviet Union and the creation of the EU (a proto pan-European state) that caused the 1990s. There was one and only pole -- the West. Not 2 (or more) different adversaries with opposed interests engaging in an arms race.

As we go back to a world with more fragmented and distributed power, we will get more war and more arms races. An especially toxic setup in the age of AI.

This doesn't have to be a binary, anyways. You could set it up as some kind of federation where there's still economic competition. Just not military competition.

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

#389

Post by olalonde »

oneplane wrote: post #386
olalonde wrote: post #384

That feels like PR / virtue signaling. AI has the potential to significantly reduce the human cost of war in two ways: by removing soldiers from direct combat and by enabling precision strikes which minimize collateral damage. Over time, robot-soldiers will surpass human effectiveness, making it increasingly irrational to send people into harm's way. In that world, conflicts would shift toward being decided by techno…

AI can also be used to say "it wasn't us, the computer did that" and pretend it's not your fault when you kill a bunch of civilians. As for sending people in harm's way: if that were the effect, it would only apply to those "with AI". In essence, AI becomes a weapon you use to threaten someone with war since your own cost will be low and their cost will be high.

> AI can also be used to say "it wasn't us, the computer did that" and pretend it's not your fault when you kill a bunch of civilians.

Not really, though. Like any tool, its misuse or failure is the responsibility of the wielder.

> As for sending people in harm's way: if that were the effect, it would only apply to those "with AI". In essence, AI becomes a weapon you use to threaten someone with war since your own cost will be low and their cost will be high.

Agree about that part but that's just the nature of war, there are always going to be armies that are scarier than others.

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

#390

Post by danans »

callc wrote: post #381
karaterobot wrote: post #10

Is this more or less ethical than OpenAI getting a DoD contract to deploy models on the battlefield less than a year after saying that would never happen, with the excuse being well we only meant certain kinds of warfare or military purposes, obviously . I guess my question is, isn't there something more honest about an open heel-turn, like Google has made, compared to one where you maintain the fiction that you're s…

At least Google employees will sign petitions and do things that follow a moral code. OpenAI is sneaky slimey and headed by a psycho narcissist. Makes Pichia looks like a saint. Ethically, it’s the same. But if someone was pointing a gun at me I’d rather have someone with some empathy behind the trigger rather than the personification of a company that bleeds high level execs and… insert many problems here

> At least Google employees will sign petitions and do things that follow a moral code.

It hardly matters what employees think anymore when the executives are weather-vanes who point in the direction of wealth and power over all else (just like the executives at their competitors).

In case you missed it, a few days back Google asked all employees who don't believe in their "mission" to voluntarily resign.

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