Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

armscontrol.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 159 posts

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#21

Post by cortesoft »

BurritoAlPastor wrote: post #11
chrisco255 wrote: post #5

Isn't it inevitable that AI will be used to improve targeting technology for weaponry? Am I wrong in assuming that if U.S. doesn't develop this tech some other country will?

It’s not inevitable if we aren’t willing to let it happen. It used to be “inevitable” that poison gas, napalm, cluster mines, etc. were inevitably the future of war, but as a species we decided we weren’t okay with the effects of those technologies, and we’ve subsequently been reasonably successful at not using them.

I mean, all of those things are still being used, though....

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#22

Post by daviross »

drak0n1c wrote: post #6

Unfortunately, the divide between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon will be bad for national security in the long run. Recent news cycles keep revealing yet another piece military equipment suffering from software weaknesses. Technology does not stand still, if Russia and China have more of their most talented engineers willing to work on national projects than us that will inevitably lead to a competence gap. Here is…

> Recent news cycles keep revealing yet another piece military equipment suffering from software weaknesses

It's difficult to say this isn't a net moral good, as things currently stand. Competent tools put to immoral ends aren't somehow more moral than incompetent tools. The only fix is to change the ends.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#25

Post by scarejunba »

geoalchimista wrote: post #23

That is virtue signaling on a whole new level. Boycotting Pentagon yet aiding authoritarian regimes with mass-surveillance technologies, I can't help but see the irony in their double standards.

They also stood against Dragonfly so that complaint holds no water.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#26

Post by [deleted] »

Whygul wrote: post #13

There is a lot of cynicism here in response to a strictly positive social effort. If we (nationally) are actually behind in some kind of "AI" drone-targeting arms race, I suspect a great many of these objectors would be willing to do work to, say, disable incoming drones, or develop systems to scramble/mislead automated targeting systems. I feel that it is the responsibility of every moral and conscious agent to oppo…

[deleted]

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#27

Post by throwaway010919 »

> The runners-up in the vote for the 2018 Arms Control Persons of the Year were the founders and co-chairs of the International Gender Champions Disarmament Impact Group... The impact group developed specific aims for expanding knowledge about the importance of gender issues and practical actions for bringing gendered perspectives into disarmament discussions.

I find it just a little bit hard to take them seriously if they feel this is the second most significant group in arms control last year.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#28

Post by ryanmercer »

izacus wrote: post #24
geoalchimista wrote: post #23

That is virtue signaling on a whole new level. Boycotting Pentagon yet aiding authoritarian regimes with mass-surveillance technologies, I can't help but see the irony in their double standards.

Can you explain more?

Not the person you asked but I suspect their comment is along the lines of how Google employees threw a fit when learning about working on a military project (Project Maven) fairly recently but didn't make any noticeable objections when Google was like "why yes China, we will gladly build a custom censored search engine just for you" as well as opening the Google AI China Center which you can basically guarantee is lousy with agents of the Chinese government and honestly it would even be realistic to make every Chinese national that was an employee a government 'spy'. 'Let us debrief you on a regular basis everything you do, as well as save copies of all of your work to hand over to us, or you family goes to prison' kinda thing.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#29

Post by tengbretson »

daviross wrote: post #22
drak0n1c wrote: post #6

Unfortunately, the divide between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon will be bad for national security in the long run. Recent news cycles keep revealing yet another piece military equipment suffering from software weaknesses. Technology does not stand still, if Russia and China have more of their most talented engineers willing to work on national projects than us that will inevitably lead to a competence gap. Here is…

> Recent news cycles keep revealing yet another piece military equipment suffering from software weaknesses It's difficult to say this isn't a net moral good, as things currently stand. Competent tools put to immoral ends aren't somehow more moral than incompetent tools. The only fix is to change the ends.

That only holds true if you consider the military rivals of the United States to be greater forces for good in the world than the US.

I would consider that an indefensible position.

Re: Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

#30

Post by tengbretson »

throwaway010919 wrote: post #27

> The runners-up in the vote for the 2018 Arms Control Persons of the Year were the founders and co-chairs of the International Gender Champions Disarmament Impact Group... The impact group developed specific aims for expanding knowledge about the importance of gender issues and practical actions for bringing gendered perspectives into disarmament discussions. I find it just a little bit hard to take them seriously i…

The world must be a wonderfully prosperous place if these are the remaining sorts of problems we have chosen to organize around.
Post reply on HN