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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

#421

Post by LexGray »

QjdgatkH wrote: post #364

A country that now threatens the annexation of Greenland and advocates for a complete resettlement of all Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt certainly needs weapons for crowd control. These weapons could also come in handy domestically if people find out that both parties screw them all the time. I wonder why people claim that China is a threat out side of economics. Has China tried to invade the US? Has Russia tried t…

Isn’t China building a large modern sea fleet and increasing military pressure on many of our allies? I would not call that threat illusionary. Also their economic policies are very predatory where they support other countries in exchange for things which cannot be taken back. Why invade when you can just take what you need.

The orange man is completely ineffectual on both fronts. Will not spend the money on the military and too inept to make a deal that doesn’t cost in the long run.

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

#422

Post by CamperBob2 »

_bin_ wrote: post #349
vkou wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

TBF, vkou's post disagrees with mine, but I don't disagree with it. If pressed to offer a forecast, I think the moral dilemmas we're about to face as Americans will be both disturbing and intimidating, with a 50% chance of horrifying.

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

#423

Post by mcmcmc »

dgfitz wrote: post #273
Swannie wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow. Yes I read the whole series. It was a fucking marathon. I can’t quite tie your point into the series directly, other than to agree that elected officials are, almost by definition, professional liars. (Tugs on braid)

Not the GP, but I think what they’re getting at is that Aes Sedai can deceive without saying untruthful. So a hypothetical truth serum wouldn’t necessarily guarantee honesty

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

#425

Post by pbiggar »

tmnvdb wrote: post #373
pbiggar wrote: post #291

An important part of this discussion is how Google's AI is used as part of the genocide in Gaza. Read here for more details about the role of AI there: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

That Article does not mention Google, and Google did not develop the Lavender system used by the Israeli.

I didn't say Google developed Lavender. The article describes how AI is used by Israel in the genocide. On what cloud platform does Google's military run?

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

#427

Post by enugu »

Drone + AI weapons have horrible applications - remote assassinations to cause political chaos, a tyrant using it to selectively target those unfavourable to his rule without worrying about human checks, bigger nations exploiting smaller ones etc.

Lot of this thread has reduced the issue to whether it is more ethical for one country to deploy relative to others. In any case, a lot of countries will have this capability. A lot of AI models are already openly available. The required vision and reasoning models are being developed currently for other uses. Weaponization is not a distant prospect.

Given that, the tech community should think about how to tackle this collective major problem facing humanity. There was a shift, which happened to nuclear scientists, from when they were developing the bomb to the post World War situation when they started thinking about how to protect the planet from a MAD scenario.

Important questions - What would be good defense against these weapons? Is there a good way of monitoring whether a country is deploying this - so that this can be a basis for disarmament treaties? How do citizens audit government use of such weapons?

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

#428

Post by leptons »

gizmondo wrote: post #312
leptons wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A kitchen knife is a tool. It can be used as a weapon. A car is a tool. It can be used as a weapon. Even water and air can be used as a weapon if you try hard enough. There is probably nothing on this planet that couldn't be used as a weapon. That said, I do not think AI weapons are a reasonable thing to build for any war, for any country, for any reason - even if the enemy has them.

> That said, I do not think AI weapons are a reasonable thing to build for any war, for any country, for any reason - even if the enemy has them. So you're in favor of losing a war and becoming a subject of the enemy? While it's certainly tempting to think that unilateralism can work, I can hardly see how.

>So you're in favor of losing a war and becoming a subject of the enemy?

I never said that. Please don't reply to comments you made up in your head.

Using AI doesn't automagically equate to winning a war. Using AI could mean the AI kills all your own soldiers by mistake. AI is stupid, it just is. It "hallucinates" and often leads to wrong outcomes. And it has never won a war, and there's no guarantee that it would help to win any war.

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

#429

Post by zeroCalories »

uejfiweun wrote: post #322
zeroCalories wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Plenty of companies produce good returns, but that doesn't make them any kind of leader. FAANG still controls the market, pays the highest salaries, and produces the most research. Other rising stars like OpenAI and ByteDance are not uniquely evil either. Not saying FAANG won't fade away like IBM or Oracle, but I don't think it would be due to their unwillingness to be like Palantir.
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