This is no longer on the front page of HN despite 200+ points and having been posted 1 hour ago.
Why I Left Google DeepMind
121–130 of 186 posts
Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#122It is honorable but ultimately hasn’t democracy spoken wrt the issues mentioned in the post? For better or worse millions of Americans voted for the guy doing the deportations. I also find it difficult to reconcile not using AI for weapons. If war is inevitable AI presumably would at least ensure you are on target.
> For better or worse millions of Americans voted for the guy doing the deportations.
Uh, the idea of democracy is not that voting reveals universal preferences or something. It is ok to disagree with whoever gets elected, and continue working towards an alternative you believe to be better. In fact, democracy depends on that; otherwise, why not have a single election with no term limits? There is supposed to be ongoing difference of opinion.
> I also find it difficult to reconcile not using AI for weapons.
You can't reduce "AI for autonomous lethal weapons" to "AI for weapons".
Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#123It is honorable but ultimately hasn’t democracy spoken wrt the issues mentioned in the post? For better or worse millions of Americans voted for the guy doing the deportations. I also find it difficult to reconcile not using AI for weapons. If war is inevitable AI presumably would at least ensure you are on target.
This idea that once a party gain a little more votes, people who oppose it should cease to exist and cease push for own values ... somehow applies only to the right.
When center or left wins, somehow, magically, same logic dont apply.
Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#124I haven't finished reading, but I should note for the group that the author doesn't represent the Anthropic situation accurately. Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war/defense for research and engineering went on the All-In podcast (1) and explained, for quite some time, exactly what happened. You should go listen to it (2). In essence, in the negotiations, Dario kept coming back saying "well, if you need it, call…
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Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#125This is no longer on the front page of HN despite 200+ points and having been posted 1 hour ago.
I saw it on the front page.
Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of whether AI is involved, many people simply don't want to work on weapons systems, or on non-weapons technologies that are intended to become part of a weapons system.
Thats fine, but a serious luxury belief IMO
Not really, it is fairly common belief. And American war system is not in the pro-democracy, defense only or whatever else business anyway. It is in pro-warcrime, pro-stupid-wars, pro-dictators business.
Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You're absolutely right, that wasn't a military target—it was actually a girls school. It won't happen again!" I realize that's not a great argument and was definitely tongue-in-cheek, but given there's still a lot of debate about the accuracy of AI for far more mundane tasks, my personal perspective is that until we have LLMs and such that are truly, demonstrably far more accurate than humans, with true reasoning a…
So you would prefer weapons that cannot reason at all? > "You're absolutely right, that wasn't a military target—it was actually a girls school. It won't happen again!" Most likely this event happened due to a bad targeting system that wasn't smart enough, if it had a better llm underpinning it (assuming it had any) maybe those lives would have been saved. More reason for more smart people like the author to work on…
President Trump reveals the US Space Force has CAMERAS that can read the NAME TAG "Mohammad" trying to reach any nuclear dust in Iran
"We say: 'Mohammad something is there with shovels.'"
"We have cameras that can read the badge of the person. 'Mohammed Something.'"
"WE'RE WATCHING. If anybody goes there, THEY GET BLOWN UP."
"Eventually, we'll take it."
They have also admitted they saw the children’s flower chalk drawings too. And they double tapped.
Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only when the bank account reaches 7 - 8 figures.
Even at zero dollars and a billion dollars they feel rare. Honestly I am surprised how many tech people still work for Facebooks and Googles of the world when they actively have used their platforms against most of their values. These are skilled people that can still make a living elsewhere.
I Think it’s because when you have enough money to never have to work again and you can move to some place nice, you can isolate yourself and your family from the rest of the world, like most rich people do.
So that’s what, 4-5 years at a society destroying tech co in exchange for lifelong freedom away from the people you have actively made life worse or impossible for.
It seems many people can live with that and in fact will jump at a chance to do it.
Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#129This is no longer on the front page of HN despite 200+ points and having been posted 1 hour ago.
There’s a flame war detector, this has certainly triggered it and pushed the thread down the rankings.
Re: Why I Left Google DeepMind
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mainly I don't want them because I don't want a machine instantly making life or death judgements. It might be fine if it mostly informs a human who ultimately pulls the trigger, but having that failsafe is important in keeping machines from going on killing sprees. I also want people to be held accountable when they do unjustified killings. AI weapons make it FAR too easy to simply pass off a killing as a "woopsie d…
Responsibility will always have to lie with the user, but if the weapons are more advanced and safer then why is that bad? I like that autonomous vehicles like Waymo are 10x safer then human drivers, even if a 'Machine' is making decisions.
> Responsibility will always have to lie with the user
Being fully autonomous makes it hard to identify exactly who that user is and is easy to dilute responsibility. Perhaps someone was added to a kill list by mistake. Maybe some internet hi-jinks tricked an AI into falsely identifying someone as a kill target. Perhaps it's the case that someone was in the 5% of a 95% confidence of identification. I'm not a fan of putting killing into the hands of something known to get things wrong 1 in 20 (95%), or 1 in 100 (99%), or 1 in 1000 (99.9%).
> but if the weapons are more advanced and safer then why is that bad?
It's yet to be proven that they are "safer" as they become more advanced. There's also a question of "safer to who". It's technically "safer" for a soldier to shoot first and ask questions later, it's obviously not safer for the villagers.
False identification, which is an absolute part of AI, doesn't make these weapons safer for anyone.
> I like that autonomous vehicles like Waymo are 10x safer then human drivers, even if a 'Machine' is making decisions.
Waymo has the reverse bias. If anyone dies as a result of waymo it's gone horribly wrong.
AI weapons are designed exactly to kill, if they don't kill when they should something has gone wrong.