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Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

theintercept.com

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Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#331

Post by dTal »

wongarsu wrote: post #296
koolba wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need a military in order to prevent other people from bombing your country. You absolutely do not need to bomb other people, and if fact if your goal is to not get bombed, not bombing other people might be your best option for a bunch of reasons. And sometimes the best way to save lives of your people is to bomb other people. That’s very naive. Not all antagonists are rational state actors. Terrorist orgs like…

ISIS is a direct consequence of US interventions. The Post-WWII history of the middle east mostly follows the pattern “US declares $X evil. In its fight against $X, US supports $lesserEvil with money and weapons. $Y years later $lesserEvil has used funding and weapons to grow and become $greaterEvil. US declares $W as $lesserEvil and funds them. Repeat.“ Short term that might seem smart, but do it long enough and you…

Not just the Middle East. You could say the USSR itself was in fact partially an example of this pattern. The US donated enormous quantities of resources to the Soviet Union during WW2 to beat the Nazis, including significant railway infrastructure; the Cold War began virtually the moment both US and Soviet troops were in Berlin. While it is true that most Soviet weaponry was home-grown, arguably they would not have won without US aid.

In all the major conflicts after that - Vietnam, Korea, Middle East - the US was supporting opponents of the Soviet Union.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#332

Post by Goronmon »

opportune wrote: post #282
reacharavindh wrote: post #65

It isn't wrong of Google to work their country's military. If not Google, some other company will take those contracts. They need to own up the responsibility for their decisions and of course be willing to put on with the media theme that "Google - the company that supplies AI tech to the military with possible usage in war". Denying that is what makes them look even fishier. I already distrust the company for anyth…

Nothing wrong with IBM helping the Nazis count prisoners. If not them, some other company would have taken the contract This absurdly cowardly thinking is how people justify atrocities for money

You're exactly right. Working with the military is exactly the same as helping the Nazis.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#333

Post by bpicolo »

fsloth wrote: post #224
slg wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because they oppose the drone warfare program, which is killing noncombatants in nominally allied countries. I don't understand this logic. Drones are a weapon. They are not any more evil than any other weapon that the military uses. They aren't killing people autonomously. There is a human pilot behind every death. The pilot just happens to be hundreds or thousands miles away from the aircraft. Would we be fine wit…

"If your problem is with killing people, it should be with the people who ordered the killing and not the specific weapon that was used to carry out the killing." Drone strikes, as they are used, are a more evil way of taking out identified targets of other nationalities. I find the concept of a nation state summarily assassinating people a bit troubling, but drone strikes make it even worse by making it imprecise an…

Do you think that if part of Google's work were to make it more precise, would that be less evil?

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#334

Post by Quarrelsome »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #330
Quarrelsome wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't be so flippant. That's not at all what I was saying.

You were suggesting killing civilians, in order to may be get a 'bad guy', which amounts to a war crime.

and when you bomb a military base you are killing non-combatants. Cooks, mechanics, administrators, a completely un-associated postie or truck driver might be delivering a parcel or supplies to the base.

These do not constitute war crimes but occupy this nebulous grey area named "collateral damage" at best and "war crimes" at worst.

In this case we are assuming that several if not many enemy commanders are attending a wedding and the question is asked whether the loss of lives at the wedding are "worth" the loss of lives through a protracted war that would arguably be the outcome if the enemy commanders continued operations.

I do not claim to have the answers but to merely state that this is not the solved mathematical and ethical conversation that some people assume it to be.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#335

Post by rjkennedy98 »

flatline wrote: post #62
fakescience wrote: post #31

To any Google Employees reading this. Don't worry! There are SEVERAL ways you can reduce any cognitive dissonance you might be experiencing as you read more about the evils your company is committing : + rationalization of your own behavior : "I'm not doing this work...I'm working on projects that help people. And ads. But ads are pretty neutral compared to bombing people." + rationalization of others' behavior : "Bo…

Or accept the reality that we live in a world that feels the need to kill people. I think it would be swell to not need a military but the reality is that we do. If you have qualms about working for Google as a defense contractor, consider the implications of living in the US (or in all likelihood wherever you happen to reside). Can you justify paying your taxes? Can you justify voting for one of a handful of candida…

Google was the one that told everyone "Don't be evil". They are a perfectly ripe target for attacks on "ethics".

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#337

Post by snarf21 »

rifung wrote: post #103
blackrock wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a conflict of interest. The public has put their trust into Google for 20 years. We supported them. We cheered them on. We have voluntarily given them all our personal data. Our emails. Our instant messages. Our voices. All of it feeds into their massive database for them to mine. We put our faith into them, in the hopes that they would honor their creed, that they would do no evil. But gradually, that…

> There is nothing that will stop this. The military will find a defense contractor to do their bidding. But Google can voluntarily elect to remove themselves from this sector. Let some other company do it. Let someone else figure it out. The blood of dead innocent civilians will be on their hands. You don't see Raytheon, Boeing, or Northrop crying about it. I work at Google but opinions are my own. This is actually…

One issue is that this a lot different than an aircraft carrier cannon. Those are super expensive and limited in where and how they can be used. Also, the bigger the fear is that we don't know where this will stop. Great, so drones are being used in war for strategic strikes. Given the current administration, how long before that might be used to track down people near the border? How long after that to track down people who publicly criticize the administration? The biggest issue is that this enables an Orwellian society that actually scales and scales quickly.

And for anyone playing at home, the "if not us, someone else" argument doesn't wash. We as a society have to draw a line. Maybe someone else will do it, but we need to fight them and not allow it, not just take our money and put our head in the sand. Just like the backlash about the NSA putting backdoors in routers and the more recent announcement of Amazon enabling a police state by scanning and identifying faces in pictures and videos. I'm worried that this will continue to push us to some pre-crime bullshit but instead of oracles with magic powers, it will be some half ass AI based on factors like race, gender, neighborhood and time of day.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#338

Post by azag0 »

ihsw2 wrote: post #317
azag0 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll just copy-paste a comment (not mine) from a different subthread: “This all-or-nothing approach to morality is stupid. Just because not every decision in your life may be 100% morally justifiable, that does not mean “throw all ethics over board”.”

This further reinforces the notion that the modern left has embraced essentialism, moralization, and Utopian ideology: * reducing people to (for example and more commonly than ever) ethnic and religious identities * turning every issue into a moral issue where decisions are separated into right and wrong with a distinct lack of nuance and thoughtful consideration * attacking those that don't share in your Utopian ide…

I can somewhat see where you're going with this, but I cannot possibly see how it is a reaction to my comment.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#339

Post by AsyncAwait »

ihsw2 wrote: post #317
azag0 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll just copy-paste a comment (not mine) from a different subthread: “This all-or-nothing approach to morality is stupid. Just because not every decision in your life may be 100% morally justifiable, that does not mean “throw all ethics over board”.”

This further reinforces the notion that the modern left has embraced essentialism, moralization, and Utopian ideology: * reducing people to (for example and more commonly than ever) ethnic and religious identities * turning every issue into a moral issue where decisions are separated into right and wrong with a distinct lack of nuance and thoughtful consideration * attacking those that don't share in your Utopian ide…

Very insightful comment, I suppose you represent the modern, alternative right movement then?

This is a very big problem, you can't have bags like "the left" or "the right" because that's too general to represent any meaningful philosophy.

As an example, many people would argue Clinton is left. I'd argue she's on the center right of the spectrum, if not further and would certainly not refer to her as left-wing in general. I'm not making a judgment here as to which is correct, but it demonstrates pretty clearly that broad labels are not at all helpful.

Re: Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

#340

Post by ChristianBundy »

barrkel wrote: post #319
Regardsyjc wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I believe the only reason American civilians like us have been able to enjoy peace is because we dropped a ton of bombs to blast tiny countries out of the sky and we also have a history of fighting wars not to win, but not to lose. If Americans are willing to sacrifice their people and resources for a tiny country in the middle of nowhere, imagine what they would do to you if you attacked them or their inter…

> I believe the only reason American civilians like us have been able to enjoy peace is because we dropped a ton of bombs to blast tiny countries out of the sky This is completely ludicrous. There is no military threat to the US beyond nukes. Nuclear weapons have obsoleted wars between great powers. Tiny countries are zero threat to the USA. They cannot invade; they can do almost nothing. At best, they can kill a few…

Thank you for putting this into words. It's sad to see how effective the US propaganda efforts have been in convincing otherwise intelligent people that the military is "defending our freedom".

I'd love to see how many millions (billions?) the federal government has pumped into this myth.

Hell, the entire America's Army initiative was literally a recruitment tool for kids who played video games. It's depressing to think about the number of kids who eventually paid a blood tax because a state-sponsored video game convinced them to join.

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