Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

semafor.com

41–50 of 509 posts

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#41

As a liberal raised during the backlash to the Iraq War, my attitude towards the Military Industrial Complex has really changed in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s seemingly inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Add in the possibility that the US could be dragged into new wars in the Middle East and even possibly South America, and I really don’t think we have the luxury to say “weapons bad, let’s n…

[flagged]

Avoiding doing anything that might antagonize the bad guys isn't a particularly effective strategy for maintaining a stable and peaceful world. The lesson of Poland in WW2 is that when evil dictators get what they want, they don't calmly stop doing bad things.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#42

As a liberal raised during the backlash to the Iraq War, my attitude towards the Military Industrial Complex has really changed in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s seemingly inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Add in the possibility that the US could be dragged into new wars in the Middle East and even possibly South America, and I really don’t think we have the luxury to say “weapons bad, let’s n…

[flagged]

The alternative to NATO expansion was transferring European defense to the EU.

Or having a bunch of EU nations extremely vulnerable to Russian influence.

I’m very glad it’s NATO, and not the “EU Supreme Command” defending the Continent. Russia and Ukraine probably are too.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#44

The CIA probably realizes it doesn't need to fund rebel groups [1] or use local journalists/clergy [2] to instigate a regime change these days - they can just flood a target country's social media with AI-generated propaganda. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair 2. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hear...

I don't know why they'd need OpenAI though. Our government's three letter agencies must have a one hell of a data set to train their own AI on.

Hell of a dataset, but less of the talent. Takes a very specific type of person to get to the front of the AI field, then take a government salary using your knowledge for (what could be) war and surveillance, likely against any public interest in alignment.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#46

As a liberal raised during the backlash to the Iraq War, my attitude towards the Military Industrial Complex has really changed in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s seemingly inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Add in the possibility that the US could be dragged into new wars in the Middle East and even possibly South America, and I really don’t think we have the luxury to say “weapons bad, let’s n…

> But one of the best ways to prevent China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc from saying “might make right, let’s take this land and these resources from our neighbors, since no one can stop us”...

... Is not antagonizing them when they were reaching out to build a partnership, which is exactly what was happening with Russia in the 90s. If you're wondering how Putin happened, that's the decade that you want to be looking at.

Instead, the US figured that since the Cold War, round I went so well, why not do it again, and oh hey, Russian revanchism is on the rise and now Ukraine is dealing with the consequences, but hey, we're giving Russia their very own second Vietnam, so I guess that's nice. Maybe not very nice in Ukraine, but they are, after all, a buffer state...

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#47

The CIA probably realizes it doesn't need to fund rebel groups [1] or use local journalists/clergy [2] to instigate a regime change these days - they can just flood a target country's social media with AI-generated propaganda. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair 2. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hear...

I don't know why they'd need OpenAI though. Our government's three letter agencies must have a one hell of a data set to train their own AI on.

I’d say talent? Outside of OpenAI no team has been able to release a model as capable as GPT-4, and I’m unsure if the CIA has been prioritizing LLM experts in their hiring.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#48
Google's "don't be evil", removed when it was against profit. Silicon Valley's "We're all family" culture, screw that, company profit first, you're all laid off! Now this.

When did "liberal" becomes synonymous with liberally removing/adding a moral value when they no longer works for your profit ? It's not a wonder why half of the country no longer believe in "liberalism".

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#49

As a liberal raised during the backlash to the Iraq War, my attitude towards the Military Industrial Complex has really changed in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s seemingly inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Add in the possibility that the US could be dragged into new wars in the Middle East and even possibly South America, and I really don’t think we have the luxury to say “weapons bad, let’s n…

> “might make right, let’s take this land and these resources from our neighbors, since no one can stop us”

From Wikipedia:

"From the time of the discovery of oil in Iran, foreign powers used force and exploited the weakness of the Iranian state to coerce it into concessions which allowed foreign companies to control oil extraction"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalization_of_the_Iranian...

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#50

As a liberal raised during the backlash to the Iraq War, my attitude towards the Military Industrial Complex has really changed in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s seemingly inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Add in the possibility that the US could be dragged into new wars in the Middle East and even possibly South America, and I really don’t think we have the luxury to say “weapons bad, let’s n…

[flagged]

If NATO hadn't expanded then Russia would currently be invading Poland and Austria. Why would this be a good thing?
Post reply on HN