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Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

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Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#131

Post by VikingCoder »

mc32 wrote: post #38
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…

The problem is people believe in a fair world and that our foes operate with the same values so that if we accommodate them we’ll be okay and therefore we should not develop means to better wage assymetrical warfare because that’s an unfair advantage. Moreover, what if they are in the right and we are in the wrong, in terms of history. They fear that this current admin and future adminis may depend on as sec Clinton…

Another problem is that some people don't introspect whether our allies should be fighting the people they are fighting.

Other people don't ask if the ends justify the means.

Other people recommend first-strike nuclear attacks.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-legal-case-for-striking-nor...

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#132

Post by raverbashing »

archagon wrote: post #129

I wish there was a legally-enforcable version of Douglas Crockford's "Good, not Evil" license. I haven't released any source code that could have military applications yet, but if I ever do, I want to make it 100% clear that it's not to be used for any task related to the killing or injuring of other people. We're in a unique position as programmers where even the tiniest bit of our code can affect thousands or milli…

Pacifism is nice on paper, too bad not everybody adheres to it

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#133

Post by archagon »

raverbashing wrote: post #132
archagon wrote: post #129

I wish there was a legally-enforcable version of Douglas Crockford's "Good, not Evil" license. I haven't released any source code that could have military applications yet, but if I ever do, I want to make it 100% clear that it's not to be used for any task related to the killing or injuring of other people. We're in a unique position as programmers where even the tiniest bit of our code can affect thousands or milli…

Pacifism is nice on paper, too bad not everybody adheres to it

That's fine; they can use someone else's code. I just want the power to license my software in line with my own values. I'd find it very hard to live with myself if some code I wrote ended up being used to fire missiles at people, even if they "deserved it".

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#134

Post by kaybe »

nunya213 wrote: post #93
peterwwillis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years we have known that US drone strikes can very accurately kill anonymous people - often civilians (such as women and children): "Every independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties than administration officials admit. Gradually, it has become clear that when operators in Nevada fire missiles into remote tribal territories on the other side of the world, they often do not know…

Evil would be intentionally targeting civilians. You are simply deluded.

It's not that simple, sadly.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#135

Post by totalforge »

Lionsion wrote: post #109
flurdy wrote: post #72

I am worried we are not too far away from this becoming a reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM

That video seems to have been copied everywhere , and the copy you linked to seems to be on a fringe UFO conspiracy channel. As far as I can tell, this is the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA

This video is fictional, and was made as a warning about where current tech could take us. I have no doubt that generals who have seen it are quite upset that they can't have it yet.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#136

Post by vkou »

nunya213 wrote: post #93
peterwwillis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years we have known that US drone strikes can very accurately kill anonymous people - often civilians (such as women and children): "Every independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties than administration officials admit. Gradually, it has become clear that when operators in Nevada fire missiles into remote tribal territories on the other side of the world, they often do not know…

Evil would be intentionally targeting civilians. You are simply deluded.

So, as long as I'm thinking good thoughts, when I'm doing something evil, I am not evil?

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#137

Post by sametmax »

vokep wrote: post #128
relics443 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that there are people out there with values that differ from yours? It's not wildly impossible, regardless of what the screaming minority would have you believe. Maybe they don't have a problem with working on such projects, because they agree with their end goal?

They probably understand others have different values. The confusion is, some values seem so self evident that its bewildering anyone with a certain level of intelligence wouldn't realize the same values. I think the answer might be that they do have the same values, but they have a different model of the world overall, which calls for different ways of achieving those values. To take this to an extreme, imagine a pe…

Ah, those are the words I have been missing. Thank you.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#138

Post by nyolfen »

VikingCoder wrote: post #120
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…

can you guarantee that this technology won’t be independently developed by a hostile foreign power?

barring catastrophy, it’s close to 100% inevitable that militaries will become largely autonomized in the coming decades.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#139

Post by imbokodo »

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…

> the world is full of extremists > Osama bin Laden could have been bombed

What you seem to be saying, in what we hear all the time, is spending money and doing work that increased the power and capabilities of the US military will makes us all better off.

You are also seem to be saying that Osama bin Laden is an extremist.

But in the 1970s, as Afghanistan was working towards becoming a more secular society, the US military and intelligence agencies were arming Osama bin Laden and his fellow jihadis, the proto Taliban and proto Al Qaeda. Who wanted, among other things, for the secularization of Afghanistan to stop, and for an Islamic dominated government to come in. An effort which the US succeeded in, along with their partner Osama bin Laden.

This being the case, I am not exactly sure when bin Laden and people like him became extremists. I suppose it was after the US began it's military occupation of Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden opposed the US military occupation of his country.

This may sound equivocal about bin Laden, but the US is more equivocal about bin Laden. I think he never should have been armed by the US. People of a like mind said as much then. Others disagreed.

In other words, if the US is making political errors (or is not making errors and is pursuing negative goals), more power and capability to carry out those erroneous policies will not help matters.

For example, Trump just escalated the conflict in the Middle East this week, which only satisfies religious fundamentalists. Handing him more power to do so will not help things, it will just mean more 9/11s in response to the blow he just landed against Arabs/Muslims.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#140

Post by sp332 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #113
sp332 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

There is a limited amount of total work that can be done by those people. Every low-level employee who refuses to work on this decreases the overall capacity. Every manager who has to deal with recruiting new people and getting them up to speed reduces capacity. Every company with reduced ability to compete for bids reduces capacity. Pushing the work to foreign companies and getting more red tape involved reduces capacity. It's not zero.
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