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Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

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Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#121

Post by Vachyas »

SecretDreams wrote: post #73
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big reason it's "obvious" when tech megacorps do it is because big tech is new to the game and doesn't have an existing regulatory capture system already up and running and legitimized like medical, civil engineering, energy, agriculture, chemical, etc, do. If this were 3M making nasty stuff for Northrop to put in bombs and drop on brown people or Exxon scheming up something bad in Alaska or bulldozing a national…

> If this were 3M making nasty stuff for Northrop to put in bombs and drop on brown people or Exxon scheming up something bad in Alaska or bulldozing a national park for solar panels or some other legacy BigCo doing slimy things that are in the interests of them and the government but against the interest of the public they'd have 40yr of preexisting trade group publications, bought and paid for academic and media ch…

Good comment, and I agree lol

I read it twice (admittedly quickly) but couldn't grasp the point even though I felt like it was there.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#122

Post by notJim »

declan_roberts wrote: post #43
anematode wrote: post #28

Who could have seen this one coming. From yesterday: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-ai-pentagon-classified-u... ("Hundreds of Google workers urge CEO to refuse classified AI work with Pentagon"). Any AI researcher who continues to work here is morally compromised.

Thankfully Russia, China, etc have the same qualms as we do in the United States and will refused to send their brightest engineers to work on weapons so they don't become "morally compromised"!!!

This was the same logic that was used when building nuclear weapons, and many of the scientists involved in that tried to find a different path (most notably Niels Bohr). I think we would be in a much better world if they had been successful. It's good that we're trying again w/ LLMs.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#123

Post by HNisCIS »

Refusing to participate WORKS.

I've had the unfortunate experience of working at a startup that started courting some autonomous weapons companies and HOLY SHIT were they the bottom of the barrel. Levels of incompetence you wouldn't believe, just good ol' boys who wanted to play with energetics. Then the company I was working for also hemorrhaged all their top engineers because they found the work unsettling.

The takeaway is that your refusal to assist these shitheads does have an impact, they have to pay more for talent and they have a much harder time courting good talent.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#124

Post by ethin »

The fundamental problem with these "agreements" is that they are utterly nonsensical as written. Google has one idea of "lawful" and what it means; the Pentagon most definitely has a vastly different interpretation meaning "whatever we want". These companies make these agreements because they do not understand (either deliberately or just by the factor of them not understanding the intelligence sector) that when the intelligence community says "we will only use this for lawful purposes," what they are really telling you is something very, very different. With entities like the Pentagon your agreements should probably both define what "lawful" really means and should provide as few ambiguities as you can manage. Ideally you'd provide zero ambiguities but I'm not sure that's achievable in practice.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#125

Post by Ritewut »

f33d5173 wrote: post #74
Ritewut wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google holds immense power in their position. Trump can make their life very difficult but Google can make life for Trump very difficult as well. They have no need to kneel, they are choosing to.

what immense power?

You don't think Google having control over the most used email, most used browser, most used search engine, most used video website, and most used phone OS gives them immense power?

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#126

Post by cooper_ganglia »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #58
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you are working with your government does not mean what you’re doing is necessarily immoral, either.

Who said otherwise? Clearly it’s about facilitating specific acts by the government. Why are y’all acting like it was so wildly broad? No one said “working with the government is inherently immoral.”

Literally the parent comment:

>Any AI researcher who continues to work here is morally compromised.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#127

Post by Forgeties79 »

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #126
Forgeties79 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said otherwise? Clearly it’s about facilitating specific acts by the government. Why are y’all acting like it was so wildly broad? No one said “working with the government is inherently immoral.”

Literally the parent comment: >Any AI researcher who continues to work here is morally compromised.

…doing this kind of work with the federal government. That is clearly what they are saying. You stripped all context from the discussion.

You’re looking for the least defensible, worse interpretation of their comment.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#129

Post by gigatree »

tyre wrote: post #85
orochimaaru wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it morally wrong for a US citizen to work with their government?

It’s not, but legal is not the same as ethical. For a long time, and probably still, it was legal for the US to torture enemy combatants. It was never ethical.

You’d need some shared ethical/moral framework to make that claim, which doesn’t really seem to exist anymore

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#130

Post by nradov »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #102
nradov wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military has deployed fully autonomous weapons since at least 1979, and potential adversaries are now doing the same. For better or worse that ship has sailed.

So we are wrong to express any opposition or desire to maybe raise the bar here? Aren’t we supposed to be “the good guys”? Or should we just accept a role as the menace of the world, wildly throwing its weight around whenever we have an unscrupulous president?

Those questions are moot. There are situations where it's simply impossible to have a human in the loop because reaction time is too slow or the environment is too dangerous or communication links are unreliable. Russia is deploying fully autonomous weapons to attack Ukraine today and they will be selling those weapons (or licensing the technology) to their allies. There is no option to stop. And let's please not have any nonsense suggestions that we can somehow convince Russia / China / Iran / North Korea to sign a binding, enforceable treaty banning such weapons: that's never going to happen.
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