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Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

nytimes.com

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Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#151

Post by Forbo »

darawk wrote: post #112
Tyrek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you certain that every drone strike that's ever been made has had a positive impact on the world?

No. But we've elected and appointed people who's job it is to: a) be aware of all the information relevant to each operation b) make a judgment as to whether each individual operation is worthwhile Now, i'm not saying that makes them infallible. It certainly doesn't. There's a long history of people in such positions making poor choices. But if you're implying that they are, i'd like to see some evidence. Because wha…

> ...thus far i've never seen anyone give good reason in the case of these drone strikes.

Because the very action they are using to eliminate enemy combatants may in fact be creating more of them?

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#152

Post by babuskov »

ucaetano wrote: post #47
discoball wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people and China to be more oppressive until its workers protested. So he's right about humanity having to solve its problems but he's forgetting that Google, the corporation, is opting to make it harder for humanity to solve its problems by enabling those who do not have humanity's best interest in their heart.

> Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people The world is complicated, and things are never as simple as that. Would you consider drones and smart bombs bad when the alternative is carpet bombing? It is always too easy to ignore the world as it is and focus on a utopian case. War will happen, with whatever tools are available.

> Would you consider drones and smart bombs bad when the alternative is carpet bombing?

Weren't drones used to carefully select targets inside cities and other areas with civilians. I'm not sure carpet bombing is an alternative for those cases:

"Carpet bombing of cities, towns, villages, or other areas containing a concentration of civilians is considered a war crime[5] as of the 1977 Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions." - source Wikipedia entry for Carpet Bombing

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#153

Post by buboard »

I think the next phrase is more interesting:

> we are probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too

A lot of the real changes in the world (immigration, cultural fragmentation, overreaching governmental power) have been masked by the continuous media infatuation with "social media". While they help people deal with these changes, these media are not the source of good and bad things, people are. From the euphimistically-called arab spring to Trump, social media have been fingerpointed, while ignoring the actual background forces which cause these changes.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#154

Post by Agathos »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #7

To put the title into context: "Do you still feel like Silicon Valley has retained that idealism that struck you when you arrived here?" "There’s still that optimism. But the optimism is tempered by a sense of deliberation. Things have changed quite a bit. You know, we deliberate about things a lot more, and we are more thoughtful about what we do. But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve h…

Even in context, I think saying 'technology' as a shorthand for 'the particular technology Google is selling' is sloppy and lazy.

But then I've long thought that about the whole 'technology sector' shorthand. As if construction, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, etc. were not technologies.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#155

Post by detaro »

darawk wrote: post #113
Forbo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Perhaps the inclusion of the absolutist "every drone strike... ever". But this raises a valid concern. Is drone striking weddings really winning the hearts and minds of people, or is it just setting up the next generation of (IMO, justified) hate toward the US? [0] [1] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Has…

Do you believe that those outcomes were the intent of the person that authorized these missions?

If you're merely incompetent to use the tools available to you appropriately (instead of maliciously misusing them), I can see why people don't want to give you sharper ones anyways.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#156

Post by asabjorn »

That is only because technology is build upon science, which captures the belief in a rational God of Christianity that it sprung out of and doesn't capture the ethical aspects. It is a somewhat problematic aspect that anything non-ethical has increased leverage arguably at a much quicker rate than our ability to manipulate the material aspects of our world.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#157

Post by PavlovsCat »

marricks wrote: post #127
ucaetano wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people The world is complicated, and things are never as simple as that. Would you consider drones and smart bombs bad when the alternative is carpet bombing? It is always too easy to ignore the world as it is and focus on a utopian case. War will happen, with whatever tools are available.

That is such a false dichotomy. Consider arming police officers with tasers. We were promised it would be an alternative to guns and help protect civilians but instead police officers use tasers a ton and still shoot people a ton as well.[1] There’s always the excuse new smarter technologies will save lives but it ends up the “safer” they are the lower the threshold to use. 1. Da_chicken’s reply below has a good sour…

> These men were able to give the counsel they gave because they were operating at an enormous psychological distance from the people who would be maimed and killed by the weapons systems that would result from the ideas they communicated to their sponsors. The lesson, therefore, is that the scientist and technologist must, by acts of will and of the imagination, actively strive to reduce such psychological distances, to counter the forces that tend to remove him from the consequences of his actions. He must -- it is as simple as this -- think of what he is actually doing.

-- Joseph Weizenbaum in "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation" written in 1976, more timely than ever

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#158

Post by drak0n1c »

ameister14 wrote: post #58
ucaetano wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people The world is complicated, and things are never as simple as that. Would you consider drones and smart bombs bad when the alternative is carpet bombing? It is always too easy to ignore the world as it is and focus on a utopian case. War will happen, with whatever tools are available.

>Would you consider drones and smart bombs bad when the alternative is carpet bombing? That's not the alternative, though. Drones are used in hundreds of situations where without them, the US simply wouldn't have taken action.

The US in WW2 and Vietnam used binoculars and radio to make decisions on general areas that should be Napalm firebombed because that happened to be the most accurate technology available for sensing, communicating, and striking. We've come a long way - but why assume the current state of things is the ideal toolset to stop at? If you're upset at the status quo, why preserve it?

Also, unfortunately other technologically advanced powers exist. Regardless of the desire for pacifist isolationism, Russia and China will continue to work on military technology, and it only takes a few decades of complacency to fall far behind.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#159

Post by darawk »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #133
darawk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that those outcomes were the intent of the person that authorized these missions?

It doesn't matter. Adults are expected to understand the potential consequences of their actions. If you knowingly fire missiles into a populated area, you don't get to say "oops, I didn't mean to" when you accidentally kill a few dozen innocent civilians.

> It doesn't matter.

It absolutely matters. Intending to kill civilians and killing them accidentally are very, very different things.

> Adults are expected to understand the potential consequences of their actions. If you knowingly fire missiles into a populated area, you don't get to say "oops, I didn't mean to" when you accidentally kill a few dozen innocent civilians.

Are you alleging that they didn't understand the risks involved? Or are you alleging that they did understand the risks involved, and made a conscious decision that those risks were worth it? If the latter, do you have reason to believe that their calculation was wrong?

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#160

Post by babuskov »

craftyguy wrote: post #96
defterGoose wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's quite difficult to think of a beneficial application of the atomic bomb, and thus, very difficult to justify its invention from a moral/valued standpoint." Large, efficient explosives in space is an obvious one. We will need to crack open asteroids to mine them or blow one up so it doesn't collide with something eventually. I hope.

> blow one up so it doesn't collide with something eventually. The one thing worse than a large asteroid heading for you is dozens of medium-sized ones and thousands of small ones all heading for you.

It would probably be better to use the explosion to nudge its trajectory instead.
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