The line should be "no" not "limited domestic use".
Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
61–70 of 155 posts
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#62I understand the vision, but how does this work on a global scale. e.g. American employees refuse to build this, but China's don't. Edit: I originally ended with "What would have happened if Germany had a nuclear bomb and America didn't?", but I think it distracted from the point I was trying to make so moving this to an edit. I'm not trying to ask "is the US the bad guy". I'm trying to ask how to balance personal an…
>American employees refuse to build this, but China's don't.
How about you articulate the threat from an AI powered China to people outside of AI powered China and discuss potential methods to counter that, instead of insisting capabilities be developed just in case.
>is the US the bad guy
Yes
>I'm trying to ask how to balance personal anti war sentiments with the realities of the world
Insist on open information, never surrender consent willingly and demand justification for everything. As always.
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#63As much as I applaud the intention, the genie has been out of the bottle on this one for many years already.
There's always this comment, saying that its useless to possibly govern or resist advancement or development or use of weapons capable of indiscriminate killing. If the world actually worked like they believe it does, if restraint were just not possible, the world would have been destroyed at least 3 documented times over. Don't listen to them.
I think theyre referencing the previous Google employee protests of the company working with the Us Military
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the article says, the workers didn't petition the CEO, they petitioned the head of Google AI who's already expressed solidarity with Anthropic. If they can convince Jeff Dean, I don't think Sundar necessarily gets a say; it's a lot easier to stick your head in the sand and ignore things than to fire one of your most widely respected engineers because he won't help the Pentagon build Terminator robots.
> it's a lot easier to stick your head in the sand and ignore things than to fire one of your most widely respected engineers because he won't help the Pentagon build Terminator robots. Wouldn't it be more like he would leave on his own and the company would keep moving along? Why would they fire him?
I mean, right. Why would they fire him? The Pentagon isn't demanding some concrete technical action that Jeff Dean has to personally perform or could personally obstruct, so it wouldn't make any sense. That's why I don't think Google executives can realistically stop him from announcing a similar policy if he wants to.
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#65"Don't do evil" Oh, wait...
Defending one's own country is not evil, no matter how much money Qatar pours into Western social media influencers.
I can't remember the US ever being in a position of defense, no matter how much AIPAC handlers blackmail Western politicians with Epsteins.
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#66Google employees must think this is pre 2024. The employer has the power and doesn’t mind laying off people who don’t tow the company line and all of the CEOs bend over and bribe the President - ie “settling” frivolous lawsuits brought by Trump himself over “censorship” when he was out of office
I think a lot of software companies are going to learn just how much employee power remains tomorrow, in the very likely event that the Pentagon issues an order purporting to ban all defense contractors from using Claude.
The kind of government contracts that Claude might lose pale in comparison with contracts that Google/GCP go after
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's always this comment, saying that its useless to possibly govern or resist advancement or development or use of weapons capable of indiscriminate killing. If the world actually worked like they believe it does, if restraint were just not possible, the world would have been destroyed at least 3 documented times over. Don't listen to them.
I think theyre referencing the previous Google employee protests of the company working with the Us Military
I think theyre referencing the Google AI already being used to make killing people more efficient
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#68I understand the vision, but how does this work on a global scale. e.g. American employees refuse to build this, but China's don't. Edit: I originally ended with "What would have happened if Germany had a nuclear bomb and America didn't?", but I think it distracted from the point I was trying to make so moving this to an edit. I'm not trying to ask "is the US the bad guy". I'm trying to ask how to balance personal an…
I'm going to give a shout out here to an episode of the excellent podcast Hardcore History, specifically Episode 59: The Destroyer of Worlds [1].
The development of the atomic bomb created a debate in American policy circles about how the US should react. Within a few years, the same debate occurred over developing thermonuclear weapons. The same question kept coming up: what if the enemy has these weapons and we don't?
Dan Carlin's position, which I happen to agree with, is that America chose wrong. It became both belligerent and paranoid to a degree that just wasn't the case before WW2. If you look up the history of regime changes at the hands of the US [2] then you can see it went into overdrive after 1945.
Part of the problem here I think is projection, the psychological phenomenon. It's also a cultural phenomenon. So, for example, when you have a historically oppressed people who are being potentially freed, the oppressors will fret that the formerly oppressed will rise up and kill them. This is projection.
We saw this exact thing play out with Emancipation. There was no mass revenge violence by the former slaves. If anything, there was more violence by the former oppressors against freed slaves and a system that excuded the violence (eg the Colfax massacre [3]).
I think nations can be guilty of this too. The US sees any other global power as a potential hegemonic, imperialist power that will dominate and exploit everyone around them because, well, that's what we do.
We also see this in how we view AI as a resource. We see it as something to be owned and gatekept such that some US company will become insanely wealthy further extracting every last dollar from every person on Earth.
So your comment belays a common fear that China will displace us as a global hegemonic, imperialist power despite there being zero evidence that China behaves in that fashion. American propaganda runs deep and the projection is strong so this will immediately cause some to say "but Tibet" or "but Taiwan" without really knowing anything any of those situations.
As just one example, the One China policy is the official policy of the US, the EU and almost every nation on Earth. "They might invade" I preemptively hear. They won't, partly because they can't but really because they don't need to. If the world already has the One China policy, why do anything? Oh and I said they can't because they can't. They don't have that military capability. If you think that, you don't know anything about war. Crossing 100 miles of ocean to invade an island with a army of over 500,000 is simply not possible.
Let me put it this way: the 17 or so miles of the English Channel stopped the German war machine despite having millions of soldiers.
Anyway, back to the point: this whole argument of "what if China does military AI?" is (IMHO) projection. If anything, China has shown that they won't allow a US tech company to control and gatekeep AI (eg by rreleasing DeepSeek). And if China gets AI, they're more than likely to use it to further raise people out of poverty and automate away more menial jobs without making those displaced workers homeless.
[1]: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-59-the-de...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#69They need to unionize quickly to protect their employment and include this as part of their bargaining
Re: Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic
#70I understand the vision, but how does this work on a global scale. e.g. American employees refuse to build this, but China's don't. Edit: I originally ended with "What would have happened if Germany had a nuclear bomb and America didn't?", but I think it distracted from the point I was trying to make so moving this to an edit. I'm not trying to ask "is the US the bad guy". I'm trying to ask how to balance personal an…
>American employees refuse to build this, but China's don't. How about you articulate the threat from an AI powered China to people outside of AI powered China and discuss potential methods to counter that, instead of insisting capabilities be developed just in case. >is the US the bad guy Yes >I'm trying to ask how to balance personal anti war sentiments with the realities of the world Insist on open information, ne…
The threat seems straightforward to me; information warfare.