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'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

theguardian.com

71–80 of 127 posts

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#71

Palantir's entire business model is taking on customers/projects that the rest of Silicon Valley refuses to. Not only is there an "underserved" audience, they get to charge a premium and for worse products. The irony is that this is a good reminder of the harsh realities that Oppenheimer himself clearly grappled with - if you refuse to build it, someone with less scruples will .

The deeper irony is outlined in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity". I expand on that theme in this essay (from 2010): https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce... "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ... The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream. We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working")."

Some ideas from me circa 2011 on how security agencies can actually build a more secure world once they recognize the irony of their current approach: "The need for FOSS intelligence tools for sensemaking etc." https://web.archive.org/web/20130514103318/http://pcast.idea... "This suggestion is about how civilians could benefit by have access to the sorts of "sensemaking" tools the intelligence community (as well as corporations) aspire to have, in order to design more joyful, secure, and healthy civilian communities (including through creating a more sustainable and resilient open manufacturing infrastructure for such communities). It outlines (including at a linked elaboration) why the intelligence community should consider funding the creation of such free and open source software (FOSS) "dual use" intelligence applications as a way to reduce global tensions through increased local prosperity, health, and with intrinsic mutual security. I feel open source tools for collaborative structured arguments, multiple perspective analysis, agent-based simulation, and so on, used together for making sense of what is going on in the world, are important to our democracy, security, and prosperity. Imagine if, instead of blog posts and comments on topics, we had searchable structured arguments about simulations and their results all with assumptions defined from different perspectives, where one could see at a glance how different subsets of the community felt about the progress or completeness of different arguments or action plans (somewhat like a debate flow diagram), where even a year of two later one could go back to an existing debate and expand on it with new ideas. As good as, say, Slashdot [or Hacker News] is, such a comprehensive open source sensemaking system would be to Slashdot as Slashdot is to a static webpage. It might help prevent so much rehashing the same old arguments because one could easily find and build on previous ones. ... As with that notion of "mutual security", the US intelligence community needs to look beyond seeing an intelligence tool as just something proprietary that gives a "friendly" analyst some advantage over an "unfriendly" analyst. Instead, the intelligence community could begin to see the potential for a free and open source intelligence tool as a way to promote "friendship" across the planet by dispelling some of the gloom of "want and ignorance" (see the scene in "A Christmas Carol" with Scrooge and a Christmas Spirit) that we still have all too much of around the planet. So, beyond supporting legitimate US intelligence needs (useful with their own closed sources of data), supporting a free and open source intelligence tool (and related open datasets) could become a strategic part of US (or other nation's) "diplomacy" and constructive outreach. ..."

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> War is real This is the generous parsing of what Luckey et al were saying. The "war is illegitimate" crowd the ones they were mocking as disconnected from reality. (Albeit, in a nice way.)

I believe many nation leaders, especially those who ruled in very tumultuous times, would absolutely love it if war was not an option but alas, we have to comply with reality. We've also seen what happens to pacifists, sooner or later they get conquered.

> We've also seen what happens to pacifists, sooner or later they get conquered

Do you have a historical example?

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#73
post #55
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the ones with less scruples are cutting the drug supply with harmful stuff including but not limited to xylazine and fentanyl/nitazene analogs

Because it much better to die from clean overdose? That's like saying, I kill people with a clean knife, I don't want them to get an infection from a dirty blade.

[deleted]

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#74

The quote in the title is totally out-of-context. It's not entirely clear but from context it sounds like Mark Milley was just laughing because he realized that he's the "new Oppenheimer" as the current director of nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos.

Not to nitpick, but to engage.

Can the quote be taken “entirely out of context” if the context itself isn’t “entirely clear”? Or does your interpretation of the quote and its meaning differ from the author’s?

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#75

> “The peace activists are war activists,” Karp insisted. “We are the peace activists.” They are literally saying, "War is Peace".

If you think the world is better off with the US as a global policing power then one could argue that having an overwhelming force is key to sustaining peace. So war isn't peace but being 10x stronger than everyone can be.

I don’t and that’s dumb.

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#76

The ability of the extreme right to promulgate talking points seemingly directly into people's beliefs, bypassing the moral, spiritual, and reasoning parts of their brains, is surreal. People just parrot stuff that is paper thin, that can't withstand even a little scrutiny. I know there is much research and obviously much practice on how to do that, but the effectiveness is extreme. Even people who have expertise and…

> The world desperately needs a leader - a Churchill, a Lincoln, just about anyone - to stand up to it, to show people there are other, much better ways.

The Churchill who authorized the bombing of Berlin? The Churchill who authorized the bombing of Dresden?

The Lincoln that authorized Sherman's march to the sea with its intentional destruction of civilian areas to break the will of the south to fight?

The Lincoln who suspended habeas corpus?

I think Churchill and Lincoln were far more willing to use force in the service of what they saw as right than people think they were.

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only works when you accept the legitimacy of war as a premise.

Please clarify? I don't know if war is "legitimate" but it's a fact of life even for something as innocuous as two flocks of cute parrots. Not to mention ant colonies, chimp factions etc. War is real.

>War is real

No doubt. And, I've personally become more hawkish in these times. You'll see me arguing elsewhere that the West needs to be more aggressive in supporting Ukraine. I understand that we can't just lay down arms now. It's more about whether we want this to be the status quo for conflict resolution. It's just not an aspirational worldview.

So, my superficial point was that the full reasoning rests on itself. It's circular and self-serving, so it's not surprising who most often repeats it. And, if that's the footing you accept, then it will always be your footing.

The slightly deeper point was that these little memetic sayings (and the posture they support) become a self-perpetuating construction that exaggerate the effectiveness of raw might, while short-circuiting the legitimacy of other options. We see around the World effective resistance to great power.

So, it's the promotion of a kind of persistent war-footing wherein perceived military strength becomes the only lens through which all conflict is sorted. Hence, it de-emphasizes the complexity of the world and the search for solutions that can persist because they rest on more sustainable solutions beyond subjugation.

TLDR; if we emphasize peace through war above all else then we will continue to have more war than peace.

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#79

> “The peace activists are war activists,” Karp insisted. “We are the peace activists.” They are literally saying, "War is Peace".

No, they are saying that the best option for peace is to make yourself so formidable that nobody wants to go to war with you. The point is NOT to go to war. It's just that the argument isn't disarming, it's the opposite, however counter-intuitive that might seem.

Re: 'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is just the useful tool to get weapons into space, not the final server of death warrants. That responsibility falls onto the deep state.

Can you describe this deep state? Is it in the room with us now?

As dismissive as I am of the last presidents constant prodding of a "deep state" conspiracy, is it really any question that such a group exists? And in case rhetorical questions are lost on this site, the answer is no, and its not appropriate to mock.

Practically we know working in companies "leadership" only has a vague capability to steer the sheep, and that control becomes more and more vague every day. It seems to be a direct result of the complexity of the modern world. Systems operate by a zeitgeist made up of their component parts. "Culture eats Strategy for breakfast" etc etc.

The military industrial complex's defining culture is "we do the dirty work no one else is willing to do to keep western democracy safe" whether you agree thats true or not. I think its something to be noted if the powers and capabilities of this group are being expanded into tech corporations, who don't seem to have any defining culture other than make cash and retire.

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