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OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

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Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#91
post #5

Important to know: > Anna Makanju, the company’s vice president of global affairs ... added that it will retain its ban on developing weapons

Where's the binding part of that? In a world where they just remove the language that says they won't work with the military at all , what reassurance should a verbal promise by a VP provide? Assume that the parenthetical "(... for now)" is implied in all such promises.

I mean, prior to them unilaterally changing the deal I can see how you could have some sort of faith.

But that’s been shown to be bullshit now.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#92
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It’s not really about deciding if one trusts the government or not. That’s an oversimplification of one’s civic responsibility to study the issues and make informed decisions. The main harm astroturfing does is convert everything into black and white oversimplifications. It turns people into unthinkers. They pick a side and then act like it’s some sort of battle against the other side.

Of course! I didn't actually rewrite my framework just to counter someone on the internet. I said that more to call out the low effort response as fitting an extremely predictable pattern of uninformed people trying to pose their drive-by hot take as fact, and the unreliability of said information in practice

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The opposite" is causing veterans to commit suicide. Which is actually pretty likely considering how things went when the eating disorder hotline replaced humans with an llm.

I probably did not explain well. Technology is often a double edged sword. If it can be used to prevent someone from committing suicide, it can potentionally be used to encourage someone to commit suicide. OpenAI and DOD said that it would be used for the former, but it could be used to target enemies for the latter.

Oh no, I got what you were saying. I'm saying it's actually just a single edged sword. It's just gonna encourage people to commit suicide.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#95

Good! I'm tired of all of the SV companies presupposing that government work must be unethical. Even if the work is for weapons, having the largest advantage possible will prevent or shorten wars and save lives. Do you want your sons and daughters to fight a fair fight?

> Do you want your sons and daughters to fight a fair fight?

I don’t want them to fight at all.

But more importantly, I don’t want anyone friend or “foe” to die from faulty AI decisions.

I can sort of reconcile some human bomber pilot making a mistake and hitting a family home, but if AI does the same thing it’s just wrong.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#96
post #57

Google's "don't be evil", removed when it was against profit. Silicon Valley's "We're all family" culture, screw that, company profit first, you're all laid off! Now this. When did "liberal" becomes synonymous with liberally removing/adding a moral value when they no longer works for your profit ? It's not a wonder why half of the country no longer believe in "liberalism".

Neither Silicon Valley nor Google have ever been "liberal." Both have always had deep roots in the military industrial complex. The "liberal" bias of tech is just culture war propaganda.

The people that work for big tech in SV are overwhelmingly liberal, in nearly all respects.

And sometimes they contain contradictions in their belief systems.

It doesn't have to be one or the other. In reality people are very frequently a wild mixture ideologically.

Just because you work for a defense contractor making cruise missiles, that doesn't mean you aren't / can't be a liberal. It means you're perhaps inconsistent in your values, which is more typical than not with people generally.

Our human history is filled with sayings and rules about these things, precisely because of how common hypocrisy, contradiction, irrationality are. Do as I say not as I do. Preaching the golden rule and routinely breaking it. Judging others by what they do and judging yourself by your (good) intentions. Pot calling the kettle black. And on and on and on similarly across all cultures.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>nor been at risk of being drafted to fight overseas? I doubt there will ever be another draft in the US. As technology becomes more important the priority will be keeping the industrial base running for military R&D and weapon manufacturing, not on having millions of barely trained kids most of which you can't properly equip.

I can tell you're not in Ukraine or Israel right now. Would you like to know how?

He’s talking about the US military. Why would they be in Ukraine or Israel?

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The opposite" is causing veterans to commit suicide. Which is actually pretty likely considering how things went when the eating disorder hotline replaced humans with an llm.

I probably did not explain well. Technology is often a double edged sword. If it can be used to prevent someone from committing suicide, it can potentionally be used to encourage someone to commit suicide. OpenAI and DOD said that it would be used for the former, but it could be used to target enemies for the latter.

[dead]

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to ignore your attempt at ad-hominem because you're far off mark. Anyways: (1) there will be violence and people will suffer from someone else's power (2) you're better off wishing for that power to be as nice as it can be (3) the US has been about as nice as one could wish for, based on historical precedent and what contenders are demonstrating they would do. Of course the US has done plenty of bad stuff t…

>But you're delusional if you think some alternative power would have been gentler. You're saying that people who don't agree with a non-falsifiable claim about hypothetical alternatives are delusional. That suggests a closed system of thought which has left behind empiricism and must now be considered metaphysical. I'm a plain materialist so I can't go any further with any statements that assert definite knowledge o…

It feels like you understand where he was going with his comment and are deliberately misconstruing it to have something to reply to?

As much as I do not enjoy the US doing all these things, I think it’s fair to say that they’re maybe the most benevolent?

I don’t think China historically has a great track record when it comes to military intervention, but they also mostly leave people alone.

The US seems to always go in with the best of intentions only to royally fuck it up.

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