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.
Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
141–150 of 194 posts
Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
#142I 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…
Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
It's a hard problem, and most glib solutions are, well, just that, glib. Centralized agreements become increasingly difficult as the number of entities increase, for instance, even before we account for scenarios like this where the reward for defection increases proportionally to the number of other participants in the disarmament.
This is also ignoring those cases where there isn't even disagreement; in the real world, for instance, while you can quibble about the exact lines it seems to be the case that the Chinese accept and approve of levels of "invasive government" (to use a Western spin on the idea; I don't know what they would call it exactly) that Magna Carta-descended countries would consider abhorrent, making coordination even harder. (Meanwhile, they consider our lack of coordination or whathaveyou, if not "abhorrent", at the very least "sub-optimal", and possible dangerously socially negligent. As I'm using English here and, like I said, I don't know what they'd call it exactly, I can't help a bit of a Western spin here, but I acknowledge the flip side.)
Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
#144Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
If project maven worked as planned, wouldn't the USG kill fewer people?
Ironically, no. Drones enabled the US to kill 4,000 people in Pakistan--people who arguably would not have been killed without that tech.
Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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?
Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
#148I 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…
I applaud your morality. In terms of moving the needle towards a more moral world, do you think employee resignations have a positive effect or does it create a less moral survivor bias where the people who are left have fewer limits or concerns? I'm sure disclosure would be illegal per your employee contract, but are there any other steps concerned employees can take?
Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
#149I’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…
But again this assume the people giving order to the drone are the good guys. But I never seen any good guys in my history books or in the news. Hence I always assume, when given a power to somebody, that the person doesn't have my best interest in mind. Let's all remember it's possible any of our country become one day a dictatorship. Just because we enjoyed a lot of freedom for the last decades doesn't exempt us fr…
You wouldn't characterize the Allies in WW2 as good guys? No better or worse than Germany or Japan?
Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project
#150I’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…
> Would those angry Googlers be against surgically killing Osama? Probably. I can't find the quote, but I was reading something about the troubles with the IRA, and the response, that really stuck with me. The author said something like, "When you use lethal force against terrorists it lets them feel that it's fair to use it against you." We won't defeat violence by violence. I think we need to challenge ourselves to…
I can think of a few examples that prove that statement false. WW2?