291–300 of 308 posts
Who could have seen this one coming. From yesterday: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-ai-pentagon-classified-u... ("Hundreds of Google workers urge CEO to refuse classified AI work with Pentagon"). Any AI researcher who continues to work here is morally compromised.
Why is it morally wrong for a US citizen to work with their government?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not morally wrong per-se but just because you are working with your government does not mean what you’re doing is necessarily moral
Just because you are working with your government does not mean what you’re doing is necessarily immoral, either.
Like the guy in an old clip saying "What is my crime? Enjoying a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?" while being arrested for trying to pay with a stolen credit card. The succulence of the meal has nothing to do with it, and that it's your own government has nothing to do with it. It's just a sad way to try to distract from what's actually wrong with helping build tools for mass surveillance and autonomous murder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your court system wasn't designed for the Executive branch acting with actual bad intent. You're a country of laws, but if enforcing them takes months if not years... Then during that time, you're the wild wild west
The system also wasn't designed for presidential immunity. Combining that with unlimited federal pardons, we're the wild west permanently, or at least until that decision is overturned.
Who could have seen this one coming. From yesterday: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-ai-pentagon-classified-u... ("Hundreds of Google workers urge CEO to refuse classified AI work with Pentagon"). Any AI researcher who continues to work here is morally compromised.
Why is it morally wrong for a US citizen to work with their government?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The word "lawful" always seems to get dragged out when people in power are doing some especially heinous rulemaking, like throwing a hissy fit over a single company trying to voluntarily draw a line at domestic surveillance and fully automated killchains.
A private corporation can choose not to sell to the government. A lot of them do exactly this. A lot of hoops to jump through. However, if they do sell to the government, they shouldn't have some sneaky way to exert control over decision making using their products. We're a country of laws, and for better or for worse, these laws are made by elected officials and those appointed by elected officials. Why an American…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because, we have pretty convincing historical precedent that 'just following orders' does not work as a defense when your government does something indefensible.
Worked just well for the paperclip guys.
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…
The pentagon is part of the executive, not the legislative, and as such they can not write the 'rules' (law)
What is considered lawful is up to the whims of the pentagon and the other two branches have shown little interest in providing sufficient checks and balances. Maybe 5 years after the pentagon makes an illegitimate legal justification will a judge strike it down: that is if we are lucky.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A private corporation can choose not to sell to the government. A lot of them do exactly this. A lot of hoops to jump through. However, if they do sell to the government, they shouldn't have some sneaky way to exert control over decision making using their products. We're a country of laws, and for better or for worse, these laws are made by elected officials and those appointed by elected officials. Why an American…
Your court system wasn't designed for the Executive branch acting with actual bad intent. You're a country of laws, but if enforcing them takes months if not years... Then during that time, you're the wild wild west
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need a shared moral framework to come to a personal moral conclusion.
What does that mean? How does one come to a personal moral conclusion? Vibes? (I take "moral framework" to mean a principled stance that gives objective grounding for a moral judgement. I agree that we can come to a moral judgement without putting it through a systematic and discursive defense, and I reject the notion that there are many moralities or that they are arbitrary, but it is also true that diverging concep…
So I don’t need a shared framework to make the claim that something is immoral (to me).