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Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#401

Post by machiaweliczny »

icebraining wrote: post #158
swarnie_ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. I think DoD/Pentagon put up the funding for what later became Google maps. Not to mention the GPS constellation we all enjoy using. Its a shame progress has to be made through these channels but it has proved very effective in the past.

If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. The obvious reply is: great, then we're not needed, let someone else do it!

This way you end up with someone unskilled taking a job and instead of 1 drone you have to send 10 because only 1 will hit the target.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#402

Post by SilasX »

rahulmehta95 wrote: post #14

This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research sh…

Or maybe they remember it perfectly, but don't consider it a valid argument to say, "X supported something you like 40 years ago, therefore X is beyond reproach"?

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#403

Post by scarmig »

adventured wrote: post #78
scarmig wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...the US military never clashed with Stalin's military AFAIK. Even in the Korean war, the USSR only provided supplies. That standing up to Hitler also involved a peer partnership with the USSR's military.

Before Stalin died, he believed that a conflict with the US was imminent. There was blatantly a hot war brewing between the US and the USSR along the borders of the West/East divide in Europe. The comment's grandparent could have just as well been defending Western Europe from Stalin's USSR territorial lust. They didn't stop moving west just to be polite. That vast military stand-off, which became the cold war, was a…

The USSR's "territorial lust" was aided and abetted by FDR and Churchill and guaranteed by their militaries. They divvied up Europe into spheres of influence at Yalta, and the US and UK were perfectly happy to gift Stalin Eastern Europe to further their own geopolitical objectives.

I'm by no means equating the three, but it's ahistorical to present the American military as an idealistic organization that exists to battle evil. Hell, Mao killed more Soviet soldiers than the USA ever did.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#404

Post by laurencerowe »

reitanqild wrote: post #357
chrischen wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be argued that the 2nd amendment was put in place to ensure a means of the citizenry to overthrow the government (as an absolute check on an unjust government). Unfortunately it's now just a vestige of an older time and the 2nd amendment only serves to protect the rights of gun hobbyists. The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military, and the modern arms su…

> The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military, I'm tired of reminding HNers about Aghanistan.

IEDs were far more of a problem in Afghanistan than small arms.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#405

Post by opportune »

sqdbps wrote: post #18
tzakrajs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google won't take a defense contract and has shed defense projects in the past" was a common theme at Google. Recruiters and employees actively advertised this as a feature of Google's not being evil.

They should stop doing that. I mean who's stopping China from using AI powered military robots? they should think about the bigger picture. Also I think they should invoke AI powered military robots in recruiting, what's cooler than that?!

not killing innocent people in Yemen because they happened to be born into a Shia family is a little bit cooler IMO

That is literally the application of drone technology right now. The application of AI in drones is going to be used in a proxy/civil war in a poor country because one of the US's allies is composed of religious freaks. That's it. So unless you want to be complicit in killing innocent people because people in this country like cheap oil, hopefully you won't see this as very cool: http://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-sile... (although this wasn't technically part of the civil war, it's still a highly relevant example)

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#406

Post by mantas »

friedman23 wrote: post #89
geofft wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without defending the morality of the Hitler/Stalin/Mao governments (or of the US government), it's very much worth noting that scientific researched flourished in the USSR and technological research continues to flourish in China. A lot of discoveries in computer science had roughly simultaneous Soviet / US discovery (the Cook-Levin theorem is a good example). There are a huge number of technology companies in China…

haha, USSR research flourished? Do you mean how the USSR crushed any research into computing because it contradicted their ideology? And "Chinese chips" are all foreign designs.

I'm sure Soviet times joke that "our microschemes are biggest!" came out of nowhere.. I wonder why all the consumer tech in USSR was so backwards if research was so flourishing :)

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#407

Post by nickpinkston »

opportune wrote: post #359
IAmEveryone wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> allow people in the valley to maintain a (sorry to use this word) delusion that what they are doing is "moral" People refusing to work on military technology isn't "appearing moral". It's just "moral", at least if you consider war to be generally amoral. People here and elsewhere have been throwing the term "virtue signalling" around a lot in the last year or so. This is a perfect counterexample: Google employees s…

Right, it's reminiscent of decrying "virtue signaling" as if there is anything bad with doing something because it's virtuous We shouldn't make fun of people because they "do the right thing". That sounds like something Facebook would do

The problem is when you write off your culpability to do more because "At least I did something" via virtue signaling.

So no, it's not wrong to virtue signal necessarily, but often is seen as an empty gesture by people who don't talk/act towards the actual problems.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#408

Post by machiaweliczny »

sseth wrote: post #210
Darthy wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracies are in retreat around the world Nope. Not even in the slightest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waves_of_democracy.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_democracy#Waves_of_...

The graph you are linking to ends in 1998, when Bill Clinton was in power, the US was the sole superpower, the EU was increasing in size, China's GDP was a tenth of what it is now, and i think Boris Yeltsin was running Russia, and most people had not heard of Osama bin laden. I think it is safe to say the world is different now. Look at the backsliding in Turkey, Phillipines, Burma, Venezuela, Egypt. Look at the regi…

> regimes which have come to power in Hungary, Poland.

There's no regime in Poland.

Re: Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

#409

Post by johnny313 »

criley2 wrote: post #28
robert_foss wrote: post #22

As an engineer I have serious moral qualms about furthering the goals of any military. Contributing means being complicit. The fact that the military funds research doesn't change that.

As an engineer I have serious moral qualms about not furthering the goals of our military. After all, I would not be here, and my job would not exist, and the freedom I have to do this work would not exist, if soldiers like my grandfather hadn't stepped up to Hitler and Stalin and Mao and say "No, you're wrong, and we're willing to use violence to protect our way of life". Just my 2c but I definitely respect the ulti…

I understand this perspective, but I think it oversimplifies the reality of why we (the US) go to war. I am a veteran of the war in Iraq, a conflict that could be reduced to a one-line "defend our way of life" sound bite if you are willing to ignore everything else that happened. I do not want my children to use my involvement in that conflict to remove their responsibility to make hard ethical choices.
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