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Anonymous Google Employees Voted Arms Control Persons of the Year

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

#31

Post by Apocryphon »

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…

The U.S. arms industry is huge, and so is defense spending. If the DoD wants better talent, then budget accordingly and pay high salaries and fix up their recruitment messages and surely some smart CS grads will go to them. Why should our military be dependent upon SV civilian companies that have workers who don’t want to work on military applications? Then just hire the ones who do, fund new military-oriented startups. This is a free market and the Pentagon needs to pay to play.

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

#32

Post by sdinsn »

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?

> Am I wrong in assuming that if U.S. doesn't develop this tech some other country will?

You are not wrong. Alibaba, Baidu, etc. work heavily with the Chinese government in this area.

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

#33

Post by mLuby »

tengbretson wrote: post #29
daviross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, but it is defensible that a greater balance of power might be a net good for the world. (Also the devil is in defining net good). And it is also quite defensible to restrict hard power to ethical channels. There's a reason we don't use chemical weapons even though they would definitely give us an edge: The moral harm outweighs the tactical benefit. (Until it doesn't, as we saw in Syria.)

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

#34

Post by sfotm »

cortesoft wrote: post #21
BurritoAlPastor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

Don't let the perfect stand in the way of the good. If the treaties help prevent 90% of the usage, they seem worth having.

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

#35

Post by NotAnEconomist »

mattnewton wrote: post #19
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…

The article makes it feel like these changes happened because less people are enlisting or know people enlisting. I think that’s just another symptom of how some military programs lost a lot of legitimacy in the minds of some of my generation who were coming of age around the war on terror. It’s hard to feel like the good guys in a lot of these issues like drone warfare against non-combatants, and so the military was…

I think the media has a lot to do with that.

They run stories about how the military bombs some civilians while fighting jihadists, but not about how those same jihadists routinely round up and torture children, kill scores of locals, etc.

Outside of Iraq, which fuck Bush, can you name something about the "War on Terror" you think we'd be better off not doing?

I think it's a really shallow view to say it's better to not bomb a few civilians... then leave them to be preyed on by violent locals instead.

I'm a millennial, and didn't enlist at 18 because I didn't want to go to Iraq (and still don't support starting that war), but I'd have gone to Afghanistan, and as I get older, I find myself much more willing to support the military.

I suspect I'm not alone in that, either.

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

#36

Post by lallysingh »

DannyBee wrote: post #15
ve55 wrote: post #3

But yet all 4,000 of them still work for the largest surveillance corporation that has ever existed. At least now they think they have the moral high ground.

Ah, the ole "sitting on the sidelines is helpful" argument. It's morally defensible for sure, and neutral, but pretending it is actually helpful is wrong. It doesn't help in any meaningful way to change things (in any direction) if you sit on the sidelines. Ironically, people who are the ones who always seem to think the have the moral high ground. Of course that doesn't mean you have to join google to make a differe…

No it's different. It's closer to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-cooperation_movement

It has an effect, you just need to have a large mass of people to make it work.

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

#38

Post by NewsAware »

Apocryphon wrote: post #31
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…

The U.S. arms industry is huge, and so is defense spending. If the DoD wants better talent, then budget accordingly and pay high salaries and fix up their recruitment messages and surely some smart CS grads will go to them. Why should our military be dependent upon SV civilian companies that have workers who don’t want to work on military applications? Then just hire the ones who do, fund new military-oriented startu…

They are paying to play -that's how outsourcing works. The high salary of Google devs is priced into the contracts the pentagon pays. So it's not an issue of salary level but of their inability to build up an internal structure (to which their public image among the SV crowd contributes) which causes them problems. Can this be solved? Maybe, but not simply by raising salaries.

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

#39

Post by izacus »

sdinsn wrote: post #32
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?

> Am I wrong in assuming that if U.S. doesn't develop this tech some other country will? You are not wrong. Alibaba, Baidu, etc. work heavily with the Chinese government in this area.

Is that the old tired "if you won't help build tools to butcher people, evil chinese will?" argument?

This zero-sum, jingoisti, outlook on the world has caused most damaging and bloody wars in history. World policy is not a zero sum game and every human does not have to help kill other humans for the world to be at peace.

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

#40

Post by izacus »

ryanmercer wrote: post #28
izacus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Huh, there was certanly "a fit" inside Google around Dragonfly as well - and the only big corporation that actively assists China at this point is Apple. So I'm not quite sure what the OP meant?
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