Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project • Hacker News Board

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

#691

Post by pathseeker » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

IAmEveryone wrote: post #204

vowelless wrote: post #3

On one hand, I reluctantly appreciate Trump's election because it will force silicon valley to think many times before readily giving up user privacy to the US government. I felt like the attitude was very lax under Obama (despite the Snowden revelations). On the other hand, this bothers me a bit because it continues to allow people in the valley to maintain a (sorry to use this word) delusion that what they are doin…

> 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…

>It's just "moral", at least if you consider war to be generally amoral.

The military is also responsible for defense and disaster recovery (national guard). There are many technologies created to be resilient and life-saving by the military (ARPANET). Working with on certain military-funded projects is definitely non black-and-white like you imply.

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

#692

Post by walshemj » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:08 AM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #150

chiefalchemist wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funding come from the DoD because any other appropriate entity is financially starved because the DoD gets so much money. The latest budget provides them: $700,000,000,000 Or as Obama said in the 2016 State of the Union: "We spend more on defense than the next 8 nations COMBINED." Keep in mind, most of that 8 are allies. I struggle to see why we should be praising a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Spending on its own isn't the only measure. The US is incredibly wasteful with its military spending where other countries with better political systems are more savvy. Plus the US has to invent 80% of the tech in the first place, something that costs 10x what it does to replicate it.

Cough Nimrod Cough La 85 Cough "the Age of the manned Fighter is over" plenty of countries have inefficient r screwed up military procurement.

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

#693

Post by guelo » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

grellas wrote: post #533

Where does one draw a line these days among the personal, the moral, the legal, and the political? The military application in question is legal and is approved by a duly elected government that supports it politically. In earlier days, employees generally would see this as just doing their jobs in developing technology that their employers wanted developed and would not concern themselves about ultimate uses and app…

We used to have a moral military, we championed the banning of weapons such as gas, bio, nuclear, mines, etc and we established international institutions and protocols to stop their spread. At some point we turned evil and have been destroying the foundations of international cooperation that we built and are building and spreading new categories of weapons without concern or moral debate. We are the bad guys now.

We are starting to see the shape of the AI driven future and it is not pretty. Autonomous drones and other robots and surveillance patrolling systems establishing strict inescapable authoritarian control.

The elite employees at the global AI leader are best suited to see the coming dangers and are sounding the alarm bells. The outlook is bleak but moral engineers are going to be one line of defense in this fight. And I hope they keep doing it.

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

#694

Post by olleromam91 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:12 AM UTC

politician wrote: post #80

tclancy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair point but it also treats life as a zero sum game that's played in a steady-state arena where the threat of Tartars over the next hill is ever present. That's a good way to prevent progress and to defend yourself perfectly against the Last War but one would think the last 30 years of terrorism would have shown us the flaw in that. Put another way: who benefits from $Giant_New_Military_Platform like new f…

Please realize that all state militaries are coevolving together and competing in an on-going global tournament for dominance at all times whether there is an official war or not, that a weakness in one area will be weaponized by a competitor (e.g. our military weakness in preventing Russian disinformation leading to a political upset), that we must continually improve, enhance, and expand our capabilities just to ma…

People immediately want to paint these truths as only products of fear.

Yes, fear is a large part of it. But it takes courage to fight against that fear and be responsible for the future of your people (whomever they are). Pretending that there is no evil in the world is cowardice.

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

#695

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

crb002 wrote: post #497

A.I. is commodity compute. You can't pull out.

The genies of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear warfare, as well as genocde, ave been reasonably well re-bottled.

Even Sun Tzu notes that warfare is not total.

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

#696

Post by davidf18 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #690

monfrere wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your discussion of "legality" here is U.S.-centric. Google has offices in Germany, France, Poland, Russia, Turkey, U.A.E., India, and China, to name a few. How would you feel if Google worked on military technology for those countries? Would you point out that it was inevitable that their militaries would seek ways to use A.I.? Would you point out that the Turkish armed forces' activities are permitted under Turkish…

I bet neither China, nor Russia, nor the US would allow foreign citizens in foreign countries develop any serious military technology for their armies. Even their own citizens would be checked in detail before being allowed to work on it. If a technology is not under that kind of scrutiny, chances are its military applications are... far-fetched.

That said, Israelis do work with American military contractors to adapt Israeli-American co-developed technologies, often largely developed in Israel with US funding, to the American firms to be sold to other nations.

For example, Raytheon and (I believe) The Iron Dome anti-missile system.

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

#697

Post by contingencies » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

grellas wrote: post #533

Where does one draw a line these days among the personal, the moral, the legal, and the political? The military application in question is legal and is approved by a duly elected government that supports it politically. In earlier days, employees generally would see this as just doing their jobs in developing technology that their employers wanted developed and would not concern themselves about ultimate uses and app…

This argument is not only extremely lazy but positively representative of that large quagmire of social and communicative zeitgeist that Alan Kay calls "the bell curve of normality".

"It's hard to define things, so why bother at all?" ... "Attempting to circumscribe the affects of your work is difficult, so why have a moral stance at all?" ... dancing through loaded assumptions like "duly elected" and "democracy", finally concluding with a tired crescendo of capitalist "competitive disadvantage".

I would merely counter: if we are the future, then we can't all be lazy sods, especially those of us empowering the greatest systems, information and power structures on the planet. Give a damn, it's your moral duty. Intelligent people recognize this.

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

#698

Post by guelo » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:16 AM UTC

abalone wrote: post #195

I completely support the employees but it is criminal that this NYT article does not mention the extensive roots of Silicon Valley in Pentagon funding. SV as a whole is substantially a creation of military spending. Just recently in the AI space: - Siri was spun out of a Pentagon project -- look up SRI International and CALO. Its purpose: a "soldier’s servant".[1] - Autonomous driving is a direct evolution of Pentago…

Just because the United States has decided in the past that the only way we are allowed to fund tech R&D is through the military budget doesn't mean that it is the only way it could possibly be done.

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

#699

Post by mkempe » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:19 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #657

mkempe wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're muddying the water and completely missing the point: Facts are what they are, regardless of what people may say or feel about them. The laws of physics, such as Ohm's Law, can be discovered and are facts even were people to deny their validity. The same is true for all facts of nature, including the nature of humans and their rights.

Scientific fact is testable and falsifiable. If you're going to claim that natural rights are fact, I'm going to ask that you provide a testable hypothesis that demonstrates the right to life as a law.

Irrelevant. Things are what they are regardless of what you think, pray, ask, claim, test, or emote. If you truly want to learn about the factual basis of individual rights, there is ample literature for you to look up and read. If you wish to believe or claim that rights are not grounded in the facts of human nature, that's one of your rights.

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

#700

Post by fricat1ve » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:20 AM UTC

abalone wrote: post #687

grellas wrote: post #533

Where does one draw a line these days among the personal, the moral, the legal, and the political? The military application in question is legal and is approved by a duly elected government that supports it politically. In earlier days, employees generally would see this as just doing their jobs in developing technology that their employers wanted developed and would not concern themselves about ultimate uses and app…

> In earlier days, employees generally would see this as just doing their jobs in developing technology that their employers wanted developed and would not concern themselves about ultimate uses and applications. This is a false history. In the 1960s the U.S. was full of young people questioning whether they should just do as they were told and be a good, dutiful employee. Since then there has been a massive campaign…

>there has been a massive campaign to roll back what was called “Vietnam syndrome” — the idea that you should consider the morality of your actions and contributions to society, not mere legality.

Is that what is typically meant by "Vietnam syndrome"?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Syndrome

Also, isn't it a stretch to say Hollywood movies about WWII propagandize the idea one should only consider the legality of one's actions rather than the morality? If anything I would think most films attempt (in a sappy and trite way) to defend the rightness of the Allied cause.