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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

#21

Post by briffle »

option_greek wrote: post #7
carlosrg wrote: post #5

> runs contrary to Google's ethos -- the mantra "don't be evil" has long been at the heart of Google's principles Thinking that the military of your own country is "evil" seems a bit puerile to me. Watching too many movies and TV shows can have that effect.

Because F16s are developed in USA and used only by US military ? /s

F16's are used in many countries. They were developed in the US, but many, many countries use them (some of our NATO partners since the beginning)

Since they were first developed, NATO partners: Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway Other European countries as soon as the mid-80's: Croatia, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania Middle east since the mid/late 80's: Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, UAE Africa: Morocco, Indonesia, Asia: Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand South America: Chile, Venezuela.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#23

Post by whb07 »

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 Clinton’s presidency. He didn’t do it because of the potential to kill a Saudi prince he was meeting at that time.

Would those angry Googlers be against surgically killing Osama? I think not.

Better drone software might help track a potential target and present with the optimal window in which a target could be shot and have reduced civilian casualties. It could also present with better intel to let a surgical ground strike which would put more American soldiers at risk but would allow for better intel and again less civilian deaths.

Lastly, it could offer new knowledge and experience in tracking humans with drones during humanitarian disasters. It could also help in tracking victims of kidnapping, are the Googlers opposed to rescuing the hundreds and thousands kidnapped by Boko Haram and company?

Who is going to go into the African heart of darkness to rescue those people? Is it the arm chair Googlers who pretend to know better?

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#24

Post by ChuckMcM »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #12
option2 wrote: post #2

Kudos to those who is ready to stand for their principles. If you are at G and thinking whether you should resign or not, remembers this - the market for AI talent is super hot. You will immediately find lots of great and challenging AI work pushing humanity forward

Corollary: plenty of skilled engineers with fewer moralistic constraints will jump at the chance to do interesting work for high pay. For a company as large and wealthy as Google, they can continue to raise offer salaries until they are adequately staffed. There is a school of thought that recommends “moral” people doing “immoral” work because if those people left then other “immoral” people will take those jobs and…

These two comments, the parent and grandparent, capture the essential challenge of integrity in engineering. You can have integrity and choose not to work on things you feel are morally wrong, or your can choose to set aside your reservations and continue the work. It is not an easy place to be and it causes many people stress.

I don't know if my experience is typical or not but I do know that several times in my career I have encountered or been put into a position where it was clear that 'success' was tied to doing something which I felt was also wrong. I have always chosen not to set aside my principles for that success.

And still I know people who have made the immoral choice and reaped the rewards, and then they have used that success to step into places of higher influence or control. They would no doubt argue that they were in a much better place to do good now, because they chose to do something wrong once before.

It is not surprising that this conflict is the underpinning of many dramatic stories.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#25

Post by titzer »

flyinglizard wrote: post #8

I wouldn’t say that developing military hardware necessarily negates the “don’t be evil” principal (especially if the developed articles are dual use, for both military and civilian applications). The western world, our principals and values have prospered for more than half a century in Pax Americana afforded, in a large part, by the prosperous US Military Industrial Complex. I totally get the objection to developin…

Given that the US military has killed nearly 4,000 people with drone strikes in Pakistan over the past decade, a country in which no formal military conflict exists, nor any formal enemy, just vague accusations of terrorist networks (and likely a bunch of political dissidents fed to them by the Pakistani government), I am really wondering where the "Pax" is coming from. Because if you do the math the odds of any given person knowing someone who was killed by a drone strike, or someone who knows someone who was, are pretty damn high. The US has brought hell to Pakistan.

I say fuck that.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#26

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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.

It would reduce collateral casualties per target attacked, which would make the drones easier to use with looser target selection criteria, which might both increase number of targets attacked and increase the number and ratio of incorrect-target-selection casualties.

The law of unintended consequences is most likely to sneak up and bite you when you only bother to consider first-order effects.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#27

Post by peterwwillis »

carlosrg wrote: post #5

> runs contrary to Google's ethos -- the mantra "don't be evil" has long been at the heart of Google's principles Thinking that the military of your own country is "evil" seems a bit puerile to me. Watching too many movies and TV shows can have that effect.

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 who they are killing, but are making an imperfect best guess." [1]

"Leaked military documents reveal that the vast majority of people killed have not been the intended targets, with approximately 13% of deaths being the intended targets, 81% being other "militants", and 6% being civilians." [2]

"strikes have killed 3,852 people, 476 of them civilians. But those counts, based on news accounts and some on-the-ground interviews, are considered very rough estimates" [1]

Not only that, we bomb inside of countries that are (sort of?) our allies, without informing them and without their consent:

"Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, has repeatedly demanded an end to the strikes, stating: "The use of drones is not only a continual violation of our territorial integrity but also detrimental to our resolve and efforts at eliminating terrorism from our country" [2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan

Yeah, I have no problem calling our military evil.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#28

Post by sp332 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #12
option2 wrote: post #2

Kudos to those who is ready to stand for their principles. If you are at G and thinking whether you should resign or not, remembers this - the market for AI talent is super hot. You will immediately find lots of great and challenging AI work pushing humanity forward

Corollary: plenty of skilled engineers with fewer moralistic constraints will jump at the chance to do interesting work for high pay. For a company as large and wealthy as Google, they can continue to raise offer salaries until they are adequately staffed. There is a school of thought that recommends “moral” people doing “immoral” work because if those people left then other “immoral” people will take those jobs and…

"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.

Re: Google employees reportedly quit over military drone AI project

#29

Post by titzer »

oh_sigh wrote: post #22
DINKDINK wrote: post #4

You'd think that killing people would be covered by "Do no evil"

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

#30

Post by Clubber »

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…

>Shit, just look at the time Osama bin Laden could have been bombed with a tomahawk missile during Clinton’s presidency. He didn’t do it because of the potential to kill a Saudi prince he was meeting at that time.

Here's an article on that very thing. It didn't mention anything about a Saudi Prince though.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bill-clinto...

But your points are valid. Like anything, it could be used for non-objectional purposes. How morally objectionable do you think the whole of the use of this technology would be, given the country using it, etc? Do you think it would help the US and allies become more or less authoritarian? How long until you think it would be given / sold to local police departments like other military equipment?

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