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Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

washingtonpost.com

471–480 of 567 posts

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

#471
post #344
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better logical conclusion of that argument is that the US needs to remove him, and replace him with someone who isn't threatening innocent people. That it won't is a mixture of cowardice, cynical opportunism, and complicity with unprovoked aggression. In which case, I posit that yes, if you're fine with threatening or inflicting violence on innocent people, you don't have a moral right to 'self-defense' . It make…

I'm not a fan of Trump but I also feel he has not been so bad that I think that surrendering the world order to Russia and China is a rational action that minimizes suffering. That seems be an argument that is more about signalling that you really dislike Trump than about a rational consideration of all options available to us.

> I'm not a fan of Trump but I also feel he has not been so bad

He literally threatened a peaceful nation (also an ally) of invasion and annexation. How worse can it get?

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

#472
post #259
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, cede military superiority to your enemies? Come on you already know the rational solution to prisoner's dilemma, MAD, etc. > enforceable treaty How would you enforce it after you get nuked?

> in other words, cede military superiority to your enemies? We're talking about making war slightly more expensive for yourself to preserve the things that matter, which is a trade-off that we make all the time. Even in war you don't have to race for the bottom for every marginal fraction-of-a-percent edge. We've managed to e.g. ban antipersonnel landmines, this is an extremely similar case. > How would you enforce…

> And yet we've somehow managed to avoid getting into nuclear wars.

Yes, through a massive programme of nuclear armament. In the case of AI, we should therefore...?

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

#473
post #348

I don't know what did we expect after they removed their "Don't be evil" motto.

is this evil, actually? a well-made autonomous system might go a long way towards improving accurate targeting and reducing civilian casualties. if you're mad about the existence of weapons then please review the prisoners' dilemma again. we manage defection on smaller scales using governments but let's presuppose that major world powers will not accept the jurisdiction of some one-world government that can prevent d…

> is this evil, actually? a well-made autonomous system might go a long way towards improving accurate targeting and reducing civilian casualties.

I love this so much, it's so poetic

there's a famous poem by a Chinese liberal:

> If I am doomed to die in war in this life, then let me be a ghost under the precision-guided bombs of the United States. - Written on the 15th day of the Iraq War.

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "not wanting" to do something that would make the company money due to moral considerations that aren't shared by your competitors is idiotic.

Ah, the Nuremberg Defense

Lol, is that all you people can ever come up with? "I disagree, therefore you're a Nazi?" Hasn't the events of the past 6 months shown you that this dumb "gotcha" style debating doesn't work?

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

#475
post #473
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this evil, actually? a well-made autonomous system might go a long way towards improving accurate targeting and reducing civilian casualties. if you're mad about the existence of weapons then please review the prisoners' dilemma again. we manage defection on smaller scales using governments but let's presuppose that major world powers will not accept the jurisdiction of some one-world government that can prevent d…

> is this evil, actually? a well-made autonomous system might go a long way towards improving accurate targeting and reducing civilian casualties. I love this so much, it's so poetic there's a famous poem by a Chinese liberal: > If I am doomed to die in war in this life, then let me be a ghost under the precision-guided bombs of the United States. - Written on the 15th day of the Iraq War.

hell no, i favorited your poetic words then I found another comment of you is in there already

> all that aside, I am an American and place the interests of my people ahead of those of foreigners. as such, I will support a world order led by the government most likely to maximize our welfare and very nearly any means needed to preserve that.

how wonderful

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

#476
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For removal it’s too late, but maybe slowing down is still possible. There is no advancement that won‘t end up in the wrong hands and most likely it will be a leak from an US company.

So the US needs to develop AI faster than the dictators to keep ahead of them, but not so fast they leak advancements that accelerate the dictators AI?

There is no keep being ahead. If one side progresses the other side gets access to it too. Too many people involved and too little security to keep it secret.

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

#477
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…

> they are fundamentally unconcerned with goodness or morality,

I would argue that is fundamentally evil. Because evil pays the best. Its like drunk driving, on an empty road it can only harm you, but we live in a society full of other people.

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

#478

Well, Google have already been collaborating with a certain state that uses AI for weapons and surveillance against a repressed population with the goal of maintaining ethnic supremacy and domination.

If you go back far enough, you'll realize both groups are of the same ethnicity. It's just that they converted to Christianity and Islam and, as a result, a few hundred years later, we now call them Palestinians.

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

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always a game of maximizing captured value. In such a game, creating value and capturing some portion of what you're producing is far less effective than value extraction, moving value around such that it's you capturing it, not someone else. A market, then, will by default encourage the latter strategy over the former. However, if the society in charge of a market observes value extraction occurring, it can r…

I would argue that since the dawn of capitalism (whenever you place that), there have been moral structures in place to promote value production and stigmatize value extraction. The precise balance between the two moral verdicts changes back and forth over time. In the USA in the 21st century we seem to have entered a period where the promotion of value production is unusually low and simultaneously the stigmatizatio…

All the more ironic nowadays because the most popular politicians are the highest value extractors who moved the value production overseas, leaving the now jobless voters angry instead with... immigrants/lgbtqa+/other races/other religions, who basically had no saying and no role in the above move.
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