Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 194 posts

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#111

Post by Sharlin »

sametmax wrote: post #60
mmjaa wrote: post #17

I once worked for a large industrial group in Europe. The kind that has a bit of a piece of every little pie there is - military, transportation, etc. I was pretty happy working there .. until I got a demo from the 'defence' group. They demonstrated the willingness to push the company's technology into heinous, heinous territory. The kind of thing where a drone would be able to follow a single person in a crowd, and…

That's the thing isn't it ? They can't do anything alone. It always amazes me that those big entities exist, because they require such a huge highly educated and skilled human power. What are all those genius at the NSA thinking ? I can't imagine somebody smart enough to work here is not smart enough to understand the consequences of working there. So why are they not quitting ? Social pressure and money are part of…

It's literally the same thing that allowed concentration camps to happen. Or, in the words of the late Sir Terence:

“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”

— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#112

Post by wilsonnb »

DINKDINK wrote: post #4

You'd think that killing people would be covered by "Do no evil"

You'd think that people would know that concepts like "good" and "evil" are complex and somewhat subjective. There are plenty of times when you can kill someone and not be considered "evil".

At the very least, most people agree that killing in self defense is not evil.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#113

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

sp332 wrote: post #28
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corollary: plenty of skilled engineers with fewer moralistic constraints will jump at the chance to do interesting work for high pay. For a company as large and wealthy as Google, they can continue to raise offer salaries until they are adequately staffed. There is a school of thought that recommends “moral” people doing “immoral” work because if those people left then other “immoral” people will take those jobs and…

"If you don't do it, someone else will" does not go infinitely far. It's entirely possible that if enough people don't do it, no one will.

The military industrial complex is a huge employer, both in the state of California and the rest of the county. The likelihood of enough people saying no to a high paying job like this is effectively zero.

And even if - wave a very large magic wand - every AI/ML engineer in the United States pledged to not work on military applications, the U.S, would just contract that same work out from the U.K., Canada, etc...

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#114

Post by throwaway6497 »

some incoherent ramblings...

I would be curious to see the list of employees who quit for this purpose. They are making a statement. They might as well publicly disclose their identities to inspire more people.

Also, wondering. Are most of them financially independent to have made this decision? When money is not an worry, people have freedom to truly align themselves externally with their internal core values. If you are constantly worried paying rent or securing your kids future - people make compromises. That is not ideal to build a great society.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#115

Post by sametmax »

p1esk wrote: post #103
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably the majority supports the ideological foundations, aims, and methods of the institutions you are speaking of. In particular the military and intelligence institutions. If they didn't, they would have been removed by vote or force some time ago. Frankly the broad majority of people in the US benefit materially in some way from their existence in ways that they might not even be fully aware of. I am not arguin…

Interesting. I have absolutely zero ethical concerns with Google building a drone which can more accurately target someone. I'm also perfectly fine with US government using those drones to kill bad guys. Now if they use it to kill good guys, then it's a problem that needs to be solved.

Yeah but your good guys and their good guys will not be the same for ever.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#116

Post by flyinglizard »

titzer wrote: post #25
flyinglizard wrote: post #8

I wouldn’t say that developing military hardware necessarily negates the “don’t be evil” principal (especially if the developed articles are dual use, for both military and civilian applications). The western world, our principals and values have prospered for more than half a century in Pax Americana afforded, in a large part, by the prosperous US Military Industrial Complex. I totally get the objection to developin…

Given that the US military has killed nearly 4,000 people with drone strikes in Pakistan over the past decade, a country in which no formal military conflict exists, nor any formal enemy, just vague accusations of terrorist networks (and likely a bunch of political dissidents fed to them by the Pakistani government), I am really wondering where the "Pax" is coming from. Because if you do the math the odds of any give…

It's very complicated and has no good answer that would be acceptable to everyone. Pakistan is a hotbed for terrorism and radicalism; the strategy of drone strikes is not only intended to kill "ticking bombs" but also to destroy organizations and keep them busy while being constantly on the look out. Much more difficult to carry out another 9/11 when you need to sleep in a different place every day, or when your most senior operative is 23 because all of the seniors before them have perished.

It's hard to argue how effective this tactic is, being that: a. most everything relating to this is classified b. it's very difficult to assess how many terror operation were prevented by those actions, even if you have the classified data above.

An amazing book on this subject of state sponsored assassination I advise anyone to read is Rise And Kill First, by Ronen Bergman, detailing Israel's assassination policy from operational, political and societal perspectives - truely fascinating.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#117

Post by sincerely »

djhworld wrote: post #57
flyinglizard wrote: post #8

I wouldn’t say that developing military hardware necessarily negates the “don’t be evil” principal (especially if the developed articles are dual use, for both military and civilian applications). The western world, our principals and values have prospered for more than half a century in Pax Americana afforded, in a large part, by the prosperous US Military Industrial Complex. I totally get the objection to developin…

> negates the “don’t be evil” principal I'm trying to find on their website about this principle and it doesn't seem to be there in their "values" section https://www.google.com/about/ Did they take it out?

yes it's been gone for multiple years.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#119

Post by sincerely »

carlosrg wrote: post #5

> runs contrary to Google's ethos -- the mantra "don't be evil" has long been at the heart of Google's principles Thinking that the military of your own country is "evil" seems a bit puerile to me. Watching too many movies and TV shows can have that effect.

Why does the "evil"ness of a military have to do with whether it's your country or someone else's?

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#120

Post by VikingCoder »

whb07 wrote: post #23

I’d like to offer the point of view that if the drones become better and more surgical in their precision, it would reduce civilian casualties. Like it or not the world is full of extremists who would like nothing more than to hurt innocent people. There is no “oh just send the cops and arrest them!” route to take. Shit, just look at the time Osama bin Laden could have been bombed with a tomahawk missile during Clint…

Can you guarantee the technology won't fall into enemy hands?

Can you guarantee our government won't initiate illegal aggression?

Won't subvert democracies?

Won't have another Gulf of Tonkin?

Won't target the families of terrorists, as our current President has suggested?

No, you can't guarantee those things.

Guns don't kill people, people do. And people are sometimes evil, and sometimes break the law, and sometimes make mistakes. And sometimes the gun is stolen. So maybe some engineers don't want their company to make any guns.

You don't get to ask, "Would those angry Googlers be against the technology always being used the way they intended?"

Instead you have to ask, "Is it possible for this technology to be used in ways those Googlers would object to?" And of course the answer is yes.

Many on the Manhattan project thought that bombing Nagasaki was completely unnecessary. Some probably thought Hiroshima was unnecessary, that a demonstration of the power would be sufficient.

Post reply on HN