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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

#401

Post by hamandcheese »

slg wrote: post #140
mattnewton wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they oppose the drone warfare program, which is killing noncombatants in nominally allied countries. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-oba... It’s not the military that is evil, it’s this particular program in the eyes of many. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24557333 Disclaimer: I am also fortunate to work at Google an…

>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…

Weapons are not all equal. Chemicals can be used as weapons. Most of society generally agrees not to participate in chemical warfare. Some weapons are more evil than others.

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

#402

Post by citrablue »

adamsea wrote: post #164
citrablue wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the prior contract reputation is the primary concern, couldn't google get good reviews from the feds on altruistic projects? The less important the contract amount, the easier it should be to choose an altruistic project (they tend to pay less).

Not for military contracts.

The US military spends a huge amount of money on "kind" projects -- e.g., not bombs and planes. The USS Mercy[0] is a multi-generational series of ships that go to help natural disaster victims, all over the world. The entire military spends on vaccines, supplies, and all kinds of good things for many people. Even organizing philanthropic events would be an example of this.

My larger point is that you wouldn't have to start working with them on drones unless you wanted to get in good with their drone funding teams, who appear, by and large, to be dedicated to killing people remotely. [my opinion there]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mercy

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

#403

Post by randcraw »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #76
calibas wrote: post #3

Is my moral compass off, or does war profiteering completely violate the whole "don't be evil" thing?

When you are dying perhaps your definitions change. I hold the controversial (and often dismissed) opinion that Google is dying. I assert they are dying in part because they built a company around search advertising before they knew how to build a company, their initial success gave them the confidence and agency to create structural impediments to their ability to do anything but search advertising. And the search a…

When you say 'dying' are you referring to civilians or soldiers? No civilian supports killing by drone in their home town. Drone targeting is often indiscriminate and always unaccountable. Because drone kills are anonymous to anyone but the killer, it allows soldiers to act invisibly by remote control. And now we want to give that responsibility to robots? That'd be a truly terrible precedent for future warfare.

Would you be OK with your local police enforcing the law at 1000 feet? Using a rocket launcher? That's what we're asking the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to do.

No company that actually believes in the maxim "Don't be evil" would participate in such a technology, much less promote it, or worst of all, lead it.

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

#404

Post by DoubleDerper »

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…

domestic social anxiety that these tools/weapons will just as likely be used to target US citizens. in this political climate it seems tone deaf to ignore those concerns.

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

#405

Post by chii »

hamandcheese wrote: post #401
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…

Weapons are not all equal. Chemicals can be used as weapons. Most of society generally agrees not to participate in chemical warfare. Some weapons are more evil than others.

> Most of society generally agrees not to participate in chemical warfare.

because of uncontrollable collateral damage. Same with mines that can't be deactivated.

Drones, on the other hand, promises precise strike, with little to no collateral damage.

If killing of "enemy combatants" can't be stopped, why not make it as precise and accurate as possible, and prevent collateral damage?

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

#406

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #396
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said there may be merit to bombing weddings. Why is it any different to bombing hospitals, nurseries, scholyards etc? Those are all civilian targets. Edit: In the spirit of reconcilliation, I would like to explain that I didn't accuse you of anything, much less advocating genocide (I don't even think that bombing a school is genocide; infanticide, at scale, maybe- but, genocide? I don't see that). I felt you are…

If its a wedding where a large number of key figures will be then its arguable. Somehow I see that as far more rational outcome than a meeting of key figures in a nursery or a schoolyard unless you're going to war against babes or schoolchildren which suggests you have bigger problems. Introducing the school/nursery begs the question though: > If someone surrounds themselves with children 24/7 but commands an army or…

Historically, the primary tactic of organised armies was to attack the enemy's infrastructure, including their civilian base. For instance, in ancient times, military campaigns typically ended with the winning side pillaging and razing the defeated enemy's city and taking its civilian population as slaves (the ones who were docile enough- the rest were put to the knife). That was the case for the more merciful campaigners. Others simply slaughtered everyone and burned everything (e.g. the Mongols).

In recent years, we have this notion of battlefield morality, where armies are supposed to fight each other and an invading force is expected to occupy the enemy's territory _without_ proactively harming its civilians. Whether this is actually achieved in practice or not is a different matter (it is not- civilian populations are still the ones that bear the brunt of any invasion).

The thing is, modern morality leans very strongly away from attacking civilians with militaries. Again, whether this is at all possible in practice is a completely different issue, but what is certainly not equivocal, or "arguable" is that civilians must not be attacked deliberately.

You will notice for instance that even when the US bombs weddings or other civilian targets (it's usually the US) they never, ever, under any circumstances try to justify the killings. Instead, they explain the civilian deaths as a mistake and try to explain the mistake (the wedding participants were firing their AK-47s into the air as per custom, the bride's gown looked like an Islamic oriflame, the groom had a suspiciously long beard, or something equally absurd).

In other words, you might consider that bombing a wedding to kill an enemy lieutenant visiting it is "arguable"- but you are very certainly into a minority.

And like I say, that's some very dangerous arithmetic. We don't accept that innocent people should suffer in order to harm a legitimate target. You seem to be arguing that it's just a matter of how many innocents and how many legitimate targets we're talking about. There can clearly be no definitive answer, which opens the gates for a lot of what we currently recognise as war crimes.

Edit: removed a bit about genocide, to avoid further misunderstandings. Apologies.

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

#407

Post by mattnewton »

slg wrote: post #140
mattnewton wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they oppose the drone warfare program, which is killing noncombatants in nominally allied countries. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-oba... It’s not the military that is evil, it’s this particular program in the eyes of many. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24557333 Disclaimer: I am also fortunate to work at Google an…

>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…

>”Would we be fine with the military killing the exact same people if the pilot was simply on the aircraft that launched the missiles or bombs?”

No, that wouldn’t matter obviously. Drones are only relevant because that’s what they are using: if it were helecopters and google were being asked to make computer-vision enhanced helecopter dashboards to make the program more efficient and more lethal people would have similar concerns.

This program in particular is troublesome because they have decided since it is out of self defense[0] it can be done outside of a congressionally declared war without public oversight[1] and to even target American citizens if the executive branch alone secretly determines they are linked to Al-Qaeda or another terrorist organization[2]. It has also been documented hitting first responders to ensure a target is not rescued [3] which would be called a war crime if anyone else did it.

Project Maven expands this new (in my view, extralegal) kind of warfare by making it more lethal and more automated. It scales this program up in a way that, say, making bullet proof vests for soilders or even tanks does not, because those are used in old fashioned congresssionally declared wars.

[0] https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Egan...

[1] https://www-m.cnn.com/2012/08/15/opinion/oconnell-targeted-k...

[2] http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/us-dro...

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

#408

Post by [deleted] »

bipson wrote: post #370
rifung wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I sometimes wish the USA would have learned the same lessons from WWII as e.g. Germany did: See, if your military or government is killing people, and you work for them, assist them, or let them, you are also killing people. We have a saying: "Imagine it's war and nobody shows up". I fear this discussion is about if you follow the narrative that US military drone strikes are a purely defensive measure, unavoidable, o…

[deleted]

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

#409

Post by mc32 »

DrJaws wrote: post #160
mc32 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what’s the alternate option? If the US hadn’t been the “police” of the world. It could have been Russia or China or India, would we rather have had them? And don’t say Europe unless you consider France and the U.K. and others and their things. We don’t live on a vacuum. If you create one, someone will fill it. I am loath to think of how much worse things could be despite the idiotic wars of Obama and W., I thin…

False dilemma fallacy

I do not think so, in this case, if we didn’t become hegemonic someone else would. Look at the Middle East and all the jockeying around within. Same for East Asia. The question is given someone will be stronger and exert power, who in a game theory framework would exercise their dominion with the least negative consequences. I’m confident most people would agree that the world is better off not having succumbed to Comintern communism.

But regardless, what were the plausible alternative realities that you think were viable options given what we know?

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

#410

Post by snarf21 »

josefresco wrote: post #353
snarf21 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

"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" China & Russia are doing it. You can't fight them without ... fighting them.

Maybe we could spend our resources building systems that destroy drones instead of an arms race. I'm not saying there are easy answers but being defeatist is not my approach. I wonder what good we could do in this world if we really tried.
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