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Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?

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Re: Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?

#61

Post by syshum »

squarefoot wrote: post #58
syshum wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is just you, as war will necessarily always involve death and destruction. The only thing that will change here is that it will no longer be a human choosing who lives and who dies, it will be an computer algorithm. The problem with war today is the people that choose who lives and who dies are not the same people that actually have to do the killing, further removing humans from this decision chain is not desirab…

"We need to be using technology to find better ways to resolve conflicts" Technology is neither the problem nor the cure. Scarcity, greed and artificial scarcity is what divides the rich from the poor and moves money keeping the status quo in which the rich becomes richer and poor remains poor enough to not be a harm to the rich but rich enough to be taxed (read: used). The day we go to Mars or elsewhere and say we d…

I 100% disagree, the solution to all of those problems lies in technology,

Now technology can also be, and is being used to create artificial scarcity and other issues, but it can also be used to bring down those same barriers, to allow people opportunities they never had in the past.

Technology can be both the problem and the cure.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?

#62

Post by [deleted] »

liftbigweights wrote: post #60

Does silicon valley like money? Will an industry created by the military take military money? I'm no expert, but my crystal ball says yes. If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area. Considering the huge defense budget, I'm sure silicon valley is salivating for a piece. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/13/trump-signs-717-billion-defe...

[deleted]

Re: Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?

#63

Post by ataturk »

fsloth wrote: post #47
anoncoward111 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I mostly agree with you on a historical basis, I don't agree with you on a theoretical basis. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. The military invented a lot of things "first", or at least provided the use-case and funding for a lot of things. But that doesn't necessarily and always mean that people couldn't have invented something without military funding and uses in mind. For example, the military probably invented th…

The practical aspects of modern computing were to a large extent born from US defence funding. Starting from the theoretical roots: Von Neumann architecture [0] and various defence projects including ARPA[1]. "But that doesn't necessarily and always mean that people couldn't have invented something without military funding and uses in mind." Sure, it doesn't. But funding and large number of end users combined with pr…

All true, and we have to live with it. The idea that humanity has gained because of military needs is not outright unethical, but it's troubling. It means that everything we aspire to as a culture in the US relates to killing other people. I personally have a big issue with that. I'm not some drumming in the park lefty hippie, though. I have avoided working directly for MIC companies throughout my career, but I'm not exactly lily white when it comes to this matter. It is nearly impossible to separate yourself from the evils of militarism and big government in the US. Even the most benign looking company you might work for, when you peel back the veneer, is taking government money in some form. It's not always obvious how. I used to work for a company that made legal research software. Well, the US Government, including institutions like JAG, are big customers of it. Everything in the US, one way or another, is backstopped by taxpayer money.

On a side note, I don't get all the adulation for the recently deceased John McCain. Mr. McCain was one of the biggest supports of the MIC and its warmongering ways the past 30 years. Here was a man like no other when it came to gilding the pockets of the militarist corporations. He's exactly what Eisenhower warned us about, and Smedly Butler a generation before that!

We could, if we wanted to, disassemble this mess. It would not mean we would eliminate national defense. It would just meant we would cease the warmongering, the unnecessary spending on ridiculous boondoggles like the Littoral Combat Ship (while regular military people go on welfare), and basically move to more of a Swiss style approach to defense where regular people are involved back in the process again. Right now, it's all about billions of dollars funneling from you and me into the pockets of Lockheed Martin, L3 Systems, General Dynamics, and the like. It's time that it stopped. Despite what you think, this is what the new breed of Republicans is trying to accomplish--McCain was never a Constitutional conservative. Not for a single day. And his run for President was a stage-managed failure on purpose in order to promote the devious ends of his cohort. It's time to hit the brakes on all of it.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?

#64

Post by throwaway287391 »

liftbigweights wrote: post #60

Does silicon valley like money? Will an industry created by the military take military money? I'm no expert, but my crystal ball says yes. If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area. Considering the huge defense budget, I'm sure silicon valley is salivating for a piece. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/13/trump-signs-717-billion-defe...

> If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area.

I'm skeptical that the military would be able to recruit AI talent in significant numbers. There's a fairly strong cultural opposition to military applications among AI researchers. Between that and the comp packages they're getting to work at "cool" companies (i.e. consumer or pure research focused), the cost for the military to draw them away from that seems like it would be prohibitively high. Especially if they're also asking them to move away from SF/NY to somewhere "boring" like Virginia. Isn't the military pretty limited in how much they can pay?

Re: Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?

#68

Post by reacweb »

throwaway287391 wrote: post #64
liftbigweights wrote: post #60

Does silicon valley like money? Will an industry created by the military take military money? I'm no expert, but my crystal ball says yes. If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area. Considering the huge defense budget, I'm sure silicon valley is salivating for a piece. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/13/trump-signs-717-billion-defe...

> If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area. I'm skeptical that the military would be able to recruit AI talent in significant numbers. There's a fairly strong cultural opposition to military applications among AI researchers. Between that and the comp packages they're getting to work at "cool" companies (i.e. consumer or pure research focused), the cost for the…

I think that one of the cultural opposition to military applications is the presence of NDA. I think all NDA shall be limited in time. There should be also a law so that NDA not limited in time or with an exagerate time limit are void. The other main opposition is moral, but I think this is a bad reason. If all the people with morality refuse to work on military project, this means that all the projects will be managed by sociopaths. If you do not want your army in the hands of sociopaths, it is a duty to accept working on military projects.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?

#69

Post by jacobush »

liftbigweights wrote: post #60

Does silicon valley like money? Will an industry created by the military take military money? I'm no expert, but my crystal ball says yes. If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area. Considering the huge defense budget, I'm sure silicon valley is salivating for a piece. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/13/trump-signs-717-billion-defe...

Either way, the military will be perfectly able to use COTS A.I. just as it's using COTS other stuff like drones.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?

#70

Post by ojbyrne »

throwaway287391 wrote: post #64
liftbigweights wrote: post #60

Does silicon valley like money? Will an industry created by the military take military money? I'm no expert, but my crystal ball says yes. If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area. Considering the huge defense budget, I'm sure silicon valley is salivating for a piece. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/13/trump-signs-717-billion-defe...

> If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area. I'm skeptical that the military would be able to recruit AI talent in significant numbers. There's a fairly strong cultural opposition to military applications among AI researchers. Between that and the comp packages they're getting to work at "cool" companies (i.e. consumer or pure research focused), the cost for the…

DC is a pretty fun city. And if we’re comparing to Virginia suburbs, Silicon Valley isn’t exactly exciting.
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