Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#181

Post by repolfx » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:37 AM UTC

sqdbps wrote: post #46

The irony of this particular piece is that they are publishing emails expressing concern about how the media might frame and distort such an item and doing just that. The email discussion is mainly about potential revenue if they were to win the JEDI contract it's not about maven or 'expecting the drone ai work to grow'. Also worth noting that Google isn't the only contractor for maven yet they are made as such in mo…

Google probably can't change that, at least not overnight.

The reason Google are experiencing leaks and taking flak for this is that it's only Google that ever claimed to be a superior moral actor. Amazon and Microsoft, for all their faults, never claimed to be much more than tech companies that want to make money - the extent of Microsoft's moral ambition was "computers are good, let's put a computer in every home", a goal which is hard to argue with given the attendant positive consequences of computing for society.

Google, on the other hand, has frequently made the following claims:

• It won't "be evil", whatever that means.

• It has an ethics board, for AI specifically.

• That it withdrew from the Chinese search market due to being unwilling to go along anymore with the government's censorship.

• That it "believes in the empowering and democratizing effect of putting information in the hands of everyone, everywhere"

• From its code of conduct, that "everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct"

And I would say in general, having once been a part of it, that parts of Google's workforce are quite convinced of their own moral superiority. Look at the relentless feminist virtue circus around the firing of Damore, a man whose crime was merely to point out that men and women have different interests and that's why so many jobs have unbalanced ratios. The company's top management went on TV and said they were convinced firing him was the "right" thing to do.

Well you can't do all those things and then get upset when employees start leaking behaviour they feel to be unethical. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Summary: Google gets shit for working on the drone strike program for money, because (a) it has more money than it knows what to do with already and (b) it has constantly claimed to be a new kind of tech company that is ethically superior to the previous generation. Other firms lack either (a) or (b) or both.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#182

Post by drawkbox » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:41 AM UTC

strooper wrote: post #58

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military. GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi and all tech giants of that era did that with pride during WWII. Then why can't Google, Facebook for USA? Perhaps the illusion of globalization is making us perceive Google, Facebook and other international giants as global companies. Although, geniuses from around the world have significant contributions…

> When a war breaks loose, these data monsters are one of the best weapons against the opponents.

War and military research throughout history have done many good things for quality of life, even back to the days of Archimedes fearing the Roman invasions, when it is more about defense not offense. This here ARPA/DARPA decentralized network of the internet is one of those good things along with self-driving cars, wifi, even microwave ovens come from radar research...and many others.

But what could possibly go wrong when military/war artificial intelligence is combined with all your data and knows everything about you? We have seen Terminator and heard about Skynet. What if what it knows about you is wrong or spoofed?

The ramifications could be much less than worst case Skynet but you can plainly see the way Youtube automation is even just for copyright, you gotta ask yourself, will it get everything right? Will YOU be deemed an opponent and a 'bad guy'? When the machine does it there is also a level of liability taken away.

Defensive military/war tools are one thing and lots of good from bad throughout history, but when defense is pre-emptive offensive actions like drones, the line gets fuzzy. Are we Archimedes or the Roman soldier that killed him?

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#183

Post by ctack » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:41 AM UTC

Sounds a lot like Google is going to start killing people.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#184

Post by repolfx » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:43 AM UTC

meritt wrote: post #177

repolfx wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth I also worked for Google for many years. And I'm hardly a shrinking liberal violet. I think it was stupid to fire Damore. But the mental gymnastics on display in this thread are depressing. Is helping the U.S. military consistent with doing good things for the world? Google has always been a global company with most of its users and employees outside of the USA. You can't even stop yourself talkin…

> with the obvious consequence of mass deaths of innocent people So the drone program has a very ineffective targeting algorithm, one so bad it has absolutely catastrophic results, and we should be upset they've tried to hire the one company who spent the past two decades refining their world-class targeting algorithms? Nobody targets better than Google. If we want to shut down the drone program, by all means I suppo…

If you think a lack of quality neural networks is the reason the USA keeps killing innocent people and covering it up, I don't really know what to say to you.

The reason it keeps happening is because there are entire divisions of the military that are paid to drone strike people and nobody, at any level of the government, has the backbone or strength to say "enough is enough". They already had multi-billion dollar targeting efforts through the NSA, the world's largest and most sophisticated SIGINT operation. It didn't do anything, it just gave them the confidence they needed to pull the trigger more often.

The drone operators kill people because that is their job. Their kill rate will not go down because of a 20% DNN driven boost to image analysis algorithms. It will go up, because strikes on things that looked like terrorists but were actually empty houses, funny shaped rocks etc will go down, freeing up missiles to use more on actual people (their goal).

Calling legislators won't help. Obama claimed he would cancel the program, but was a phenomenally weak leader who was immediately manipulated into a consensus-quo "middle ground" position of, OK, we'll keep drone striking people, but I will personally approve each one: as if his decisions couldn't be completely determined by the people controlling his access to information!

(I'm not even American, by the way).

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#185

Post by repolfx » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:45 AM UTC

dayaz36 wrote: post #148

One of the contractual requirements for Google's acquisition of Deep Mind was that their technology will never be used for military purposes. I wonder if Google did this behind their back or Deep Mind is fully aware and is doing this willingly? "One constraint we do have— that wasn’t part of a committee but part of the acquisition terms—is that no technology coming out of Deep Mind will be used for military or intell…

Feels good but is useless.

Google has its own AI research operation that's not the same as DeepMind. But even if it didn't, all they'd have to do is wait for some third party academics to publish a paper that improved slightly on a DeepMind paper, and then they could use it and say the "technology" didn't come from DeepMind. After all, where does tech come from? Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#186

Post by netsharc » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:47 AM UTC

delbel wrote: post #70

strooper wrote: post #58

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military. GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi and all tech giants of that era did that with pride during WWII. Then why can't Google, Facebook for USA? Perhaps the illusion of globalization is making us perceive Google, Facebook and other international giants as global companies. Although, geniuses from around the world have significant contributions…

its wrong because we don't want to one day wake up with autonomous drones flying over our head that can kill us. Upload a video to youtube with the wrong ideaology or keyword that triggered some AI to flag your account? Get ready to be fragged as soon as you step outside. I'd like to opt out please

The algorithms that take videos down due to "copyright" is already quite stupid, imagine it misclassifying your video as a terrorist video (or... an anti-Donald Trump, so anti-government...)

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#187

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:48 AM UTC

blackrock wrote: post #98

strooper wrote: post #58

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military. GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi and all tech giants of that era did that with pride during WWII. Then why can't Google, Facebook for USA? Perhaps the illusion of globalization is making us perceive Google, Facebook and other international giants as global companies. Although, geniuses from around the world have significant contributions…

Because it is a conflict of interest. The public has put their trust into Google for 20 years. We supported them. We cheered them on. We have voluntarily given them all our personal data. Our emails. Our instant messages. Our voices. All of it feeds into their massive database for them to mine. We put our faith into them, in the hopes that they would honor their creed, that they would do no evil. But gradually, that…

I also use Google stuff, to an extent, but I never fooled myself that corporations are all about profit and their management board goals.

Those that assign human behavig or ideas of better good to multinationals are fooling themselves.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#188

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:56 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #109

cobookman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source please. I've Not seen anything stating most tech employees are anti Maven. Blind had a poll and it showed the exact opposite, with a strong majority for Maven.

There's a large gap between being OK with your employer having a military project, and believing that the entirety of your multinational corporation is (either morally or legally) bound to one particular nation. I suspect most of those Googlers who are OK with building a robot for Pentagon will probably be OK with building another for, say, the German military. (Why not? It's double the profit.)

[deleted]

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#189

Post by akerro » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 7:58 AM UTC

strooper wrote: post #58

I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military. GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi and all tech giants of that era did that with pride during WWII. Then why can't Google, Facebook for USA? Perhaps the illusion of globalization is making us perceive Google, Facebook and other international giants as global companies. Although, geniuses from around the world have significant contributions…

> I don't see anything wrong for a company of a particular country helping their military. GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi and all tech giants of that era did that with pride during WWII. Then why can't Google, Facebook for USA?

Companies that supported holocaust on Poles and Jews did nothing wrong, because they were helping military?

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#190

Post by meritt » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 8:01 AM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #184

meritt wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the obvious consequence of mass deaths of innocent people So the drone program has a very ineffective targeting algorithm, one so bad it has absolutely catastrophic results, and we should be upset they've tried to hire the one company who spent the past two decades refining their world-class targeting algorithms? Nobody targets better than Google. If we want to shut down the drone program, by all means I suppo…

If you think a lack of quality neural networks is the reason the USA keeps killing innocent people and covering it up, I don't really know what to say to you. The reason it keeps happening is because there are entire divisions of the military that are paid to drone strike people and nobody, at any level of the government, has the backbone or strength to say "enough is enough". They already had multi-billion dollar ta…

You didn't really provide an answer to why the USA keeps killing innocent people other than asserting the US military is designed to kill people (which is absolutely true) but I'm not seeing the reasoning why innocents are killed. Nearly everyone in the world agrees that innocents should not be killed, and I think it's fairly safe to assume the US military does not pride itself on the deaths of innocent civilians.

Obama's administration misrepresented the drone program for its "surgical precision" and "ability with laser-like focus to eliminate the cancerous tumor called an al-Qaida terrorist, while limiting damage to the tissue around it" [1]. Seems to me like a targeting issue.

So I guess my question to you is: If the drone program was somehow 100% precise and it only affected people the US government deemed as "bad people", would you still be against it? If so there's no real point in our sub-discussion, as you're wanting Google to somehow shut down the drone program and I want Google to help reduce their false positive rate to zero.

As you've said, neither of us (nor Google) has the power to shut down the program, so I'd rather at least try and support doing good by reducing the deaths of the innocent until some sort of miraculous shift in US politics can result in a more permanent shuttering of the program. And I don't see that happening as even Bernie Sanders supports the drone program [2]. It's here to stay whether people like it or not, so why not focus on making it more accurate.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2012/05/01/151778804/john-brennan-delive...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/11/bernie-sande...