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

Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 308 posts

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#271

Post by cooper_ganglia »

impossiblefork wrote: post #250
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor should you be burdened with that. This is why we elect competent (hopefully) leaders to worry about these things for us. Mob rule democracy about every national secret would mean they’re not secrets for very long!

Why should you not be burdened with that? Surely you are responsible for the consequences of what you do, no matter how indirect? After all, we live in physical reality, not in some world of laws. If you cause something you cause that thing. You are reponsible, even if it is through some long chain.

> Surely you are responsible for the consequences of what you do, no matter how indirect?

No, that’s preposterous. You are not responsible for the actions of others simply because your actions put them in a place to perform said actions. That seems like a very stressful way to go through life.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#272

Post by avaer »

tombert wrote: post #5

When my sister and I would play monopoly as kids, we had lost the manual so whenever we didn’t like the outcome of whatever happened, we would make up rules about what was right. Technically then, it was very easy stay compliant while still being able to do well because we could rewrite the rules. Also, since I was older I feel like I was able to get away with those redefinitions a lot more often…

We need to encourage kids to play and make mistakes more so they can prepare themselves for the real world.

Which is really just a bunch of big children with bank accounts, drugs, and weapons.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#273

Post by ddtaylor »

thisisauserid wrote: post #230
ddtaylor wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AI researcher can work anywhere they want, can't they? At the minimum they could work in a different field entirely. It seems like a false dichotomy to frame the question around laws.

Got it. It's immoral because you said so.

What did I say was immoral?

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#274

Post by SecretDreams »

fwip wrote: post #210
Vachyas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment, and I agree lol I read it twice (admittedly quickly) but couldn't grasp the point even though I felt like it was there.

It's not really hard to read. If this were a traditionally evil company, the work to legalize the evil things would have started forty years ago.

Ya I roughly understand that the OP wanted to convey this message, but it was absolutely a hard read the way they conveyed it.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#275

Post by WarmWash »

tombert wrote: post #269
WarmWash wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The harsh reality is that conversion from "free" to paid is on the order of 1%. This is true for everything from patreon, to wikipedia, to kagi, to nebula, to home mailers for charity. 1% of the people pay, 60% watch ads, 39% are crusaders who conveniently are morally obligated to not pay or compensate for anything (but have their costs covered by the other two groups, who complain about ads/costs but somehow are bli…

Do we need more than 1% conversion though? As long as the company is sustainable then that's sufficient to justify the company's existence. I think it says more about a lot of these services in that they're so shitty that they people will only use them if they're "free"; if Google or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok aren't good enough services to justify people paying for it, then maybe they shouldn't exist? You can't…

Then accept the equilibrium of Google being the god of the internet.

If people refuse to pay, refuse to view ads, and are happy to let the suckers like you (and me) carry the cost, then no one should be complaining about the impenetrable giants who reign over us. The internet can reap what it sowed. I'm burning 3GB a month loading ads on my phone so others can view ad free? Maybe I should petition the IRS to let me write it off as a charitable donation.

The story of Vid.me is excellent here, because they were actually on track to dethrone youtube. The hype was real and they genuinely were getting positive traction. Did youtube fight back? Did google sound the alarm? Was there any effort to keep creators on yt? No, no, and no. Why?

Because Google knew Vid.me would run out of runway, and that at heart, the users were just there for the free lunch. Vid.me went bankrupt and never made even a dollar from their "fans".

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#276

Post by [deleted] »

senordevnyc wrote: post #175
foltik wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. They're just lamenting the contrast between what their friends say (fuck tech, no kings) and what they spend their workweek in service of. It's not complicated: if these friends would take a non-society-destroying job at equal pay (who wouldn't?) then their values aren't driving the decision, money is. Fine, that's a choice adults get to make. But then own it and actually justify it on its m…

Not everyone sees AI as "society-destroying".

[deleted]

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#277

Post by [deleted] »

senordevnyc wrote: post #175
foltik wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. They're just lamenting the contrast between what their friends say (fuck tech, no kings) and what they spend their workweek in service of. It's not complicated: if these friends would take a non-society-destroying job at equal pay (who wouldn't?) then their values aren't driving the decision, money is. Fine, that's a choice adults get to make. But then own it and actually justify it on its m…

Not everyone sees AI as "society-destroying".

[deleted]

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#278

Post by foltik »

senordevnyc wrote: post #175
foltik wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. They're just lamenting the contrast between what their friends say (fuck tech, no kings) and what they spend their workweek in service of. It's not complicated: if these friends would take a non-society-destroying job at equal pay (who wouldn't?) then their values aren't driving the decision, money is. Fine, that's a choice adults get to make. But then own it and actually justify it on its m…

Not everyone sees AI as "society-destroying".

Didn’t say that. The friends in question clearly think it is. My point more generally was about people who publicly talk about $X being society-destroying while materially enabling $X for a paycheck.

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#279

Post by AlotOfReading »

kube-system wrote: post #242
mattlondon wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, they won't be using any of the existing Google Gemini models of infra then? Because all of Google - from Gemini to the data center infra etc - has (and still is) worked on by non-US persons even - gasp - outside the US . They'll do a complete clean-room ground up bootstrap of all the research and infrastructure from zero? Seems unlikely.

You of course don't have to reinvent science, but it is in fact standard practice to do infrastructure from the literal ground up with US citizens for even unclassified government data. https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

Can you provide a different source on that? The govcloud page you've linked says operated by US citizens, not built by US citizens. I'd be pretty surprised if they did the latter. Standard practice as I understand it is to simply run the standard software in a separate environment. A recent Propublica report [0] pointed out that Microsoft was hiring citizens to escort the actual engineers that aren't citizens, for example.

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-digital-escorts...

Re: Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for 'any lawful' use of AI

#280

Post by declan_roberts »

yibg wrote: post #161
declan_roberts wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully Russia, China, etc have the same qualms as we do in the United States and will refused to send their brightest engineers to work on weapons so they don't become "morally compromised"!!!

We also used to point to Russia and China as places we don't want to copy.

You don't have to copy them. You have to beat them.
Post reply on HN