Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project • Hacker News Board

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#191

Post by titzer » Wed, May 16, 2018, 7:57 AM UTC

hahajk wrote: post #146

titzer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, no. Drones enabled the US to kill 4,000 people in Pakistan--people who arguably would not have been killed without that tech.

Those people would almost certainly been targeted by manned jets. The US still sends out tons of manned combat missions (as many as 20 sorties a day from a single carrier according to this article: https://news.usni.org/2018/03/19/u-s-evolving-middle-east-op... )

> Those people would almost certainly been targeted by manned jets.

I doubt it, considering the cost of manned jets and their limited time-on-target, political fallout, risk to pilots, etc. Drones are stealthy, silent, cheap to operate, have long time on target, and have both surveillance and attack capabilities. Drones are the key enabler for this completely unprecedented type of pervasive, constant warfare.

People who want to make drones "more efficient" at this job are totally missing the point. Making them even more efficient just means they'll be even more widely deployed, which makes the whole problem even worse. The wider deployment completely dwarfs any savings from "less collateral damage". We need to stop drone warfare, not make it better. Return to the rule of law.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#192

Post by p1esk » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:14 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #190

p1esk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not sure what your point is. Are you saying that people in US government/military/etc who decide who to kill make bad decisions? If so, give some examples, and suggest how we can improve the situation.

http://airwars.org/ Pay attention to the facts behind the curtain.

This is the main reason why we need more intelligent weapons - to minimize civilian casualties.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#193

Post by nunya213 » Wed, May 16, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #183

nunya213 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your thoughts don't matter, your intent does. The whole "The Military is like so evil maaaaan" shit is so 1969, grow up.

There's a long list of atrocities in human history that have been committed with the best - or at least, good, or at worst, neutral intentions. Perhaps we should judge organizations based on what they actually do, as opposed to what they intend to do, or what they tell themselves they intend to do.

Do you know why there is a difference between Manslaughter and Murder in the legal code? For the same reason that your statement is absurd. If you don't understand that then we have nothing else to discuss.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#194

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, May 16, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #34

oh_sigh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to tell if those people were planning on leaving anyway, and just wanted to make a splash. How many people quit each week in a company with 90,000 employees? Only a small percent of engineers at google are AI experts. Sure, more people use it, but they probably just make a service call and get some magic results back.

Leaving and making a "splash," on a company as well known as reported on as Google has quite a bit of risk involved, I would think.

Yup, being known to have left a company because it wasn't liberal enough for you isn't exactly going to get you blacklisted in SV.