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Google Workers Urge CEO To Pull Out of Pentagon AI Project (nytimes.com)
Thousands of Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers, have signed a letter protesting the company's involvement in a Pentagon program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). From a report: The letter, which is circulating inside Google and has garnered more than 3,100 signatures, reflects a culture clash between Silicon Valley and the federal government that is likely to intensify as cutting-edge artificial intelligence is increasingly employed for military purposes. "We believe that Google should not be in the business of war," says the letter, addressed to Sundar Pichai, the company's chief executive. It asks that Google pull out of Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program, and announce a policy that it will not "ever build warfare technology."
That kind of idealistic stance, while certainly not shared by all Google employees, comes naturally to a company whose motto is "Don't be evil," a phrase invoked in the protest letter. But it is distinctly foreign to Washington's massive defense industry and certainly to the Pentagon, where the defense secretary, Jim Mattis, has often said a central goal is to increase the "lethality" of the United States military.
That kind of idealistic stance, while certainly not shared by all Google employees, comes naturally to a company whose motto is "Don't be evil," a phrase invoked in the protest letter. But it is distinctly foreign to Washington's massive defense industry and certainly to the Pentagon, where the defense secretary, Jim Mattis, has often said a central goal is to increase the "lethality" of the United States military.
Here is former senior CIA officer Michael Scheuer explaining the concept of "blowback."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DAt6Pf7jZjA
The U.S. government's interventionist foreign policy has sparked countless wars and inspired nearly every major Islamic terrorist movement in modern history. The military is the most expensive, destructive big government program of all. If you value peace and safety, BRING THE TROOPS HOME.
Quitting would be a reasonable third step, but it's pretty stupid to quit as a first step. First complain, then petition, then quit. If an employee quits first, then they're not giving management a chance to respond/react and improve the situation.
Also, if all the people opposed to the project quit, then no one at Google will be opposed to the project and it will continue. Quitting first just gives the company a clear path to keep doing what they are doing.
When something like this comes up it is important to try to fix it from within first. If that fails, then quit on principle.
People are always finding new means and reasons to kill each other, and they'll do it with or without my help. The best we can do as engineers is to make sure that the attacks are as precise and successful as possible, to minimize the innocent casualties.If an AI can tell the difference in 10 pixels between a firearm flash or the sun reflecting off a camera lens, I'm all in favor of it.
100 years ago, the belief was that war could be ended if there were only more powerful weapons. Those weapons were created, and their creators went on to regret creating them. Sure, people will continue to kill each other, but they can do it without my help.
History has taught us, war is a zero sum game. The only way to win is not to play.
I became an engineer to make the world better, not to tear it apart.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Problem is, with the possible exception of Afghanistan, US foreign policy since the resolution of that Pearl Harbour thing has basically been about starting an almost continuous string of fights.
Though the US has definitely been too cavalier about throwing its military around since WWII, I can think of two counterexamples to your statement. The Korean War in the 50's was started by an invasion of the South by N. Korea, which was a USSR client at the time.
The 'first' Gulf War in the 90's was started by an invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.
You can argue whether the US should have intervened in either, but the US didn't start either one and especially in the case of Korea didn't want that fight at the time given how quickly the S. Korea/US/UN forces were so quickly overwhelmed at the beginning.