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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.
Instead of helping them to make drone strikes more accurate, let's let the Pentagon continue to hit civilian bystanders too.
They apparently have no problem with their employer providing anonymized telephone service to illegal telemarketers.
"comes naturally to a company whose motto is "Don't be evil,""
... the military is evil.
Naturally
You don't have to really make that interpretation on your own.
See we have these helpful smart people to tell us how to form opinions.
In addition to figuring out how to search web pages what else would any engineer naturally learn really good?
The military does evil things.
Of course !!
Please don't bother disagreeing with this. We are all very mentally exhausted from all the smart things we do all the time. Rubix cube pagaentry and all that takes its toll, so don't be an insensitive clod.
(Just sayin..) If you don't like what the company you work for does, it might be time to find a new place to work... Just tell HR on your way out the door why you are leaving. Trust me, it will have a bigger impact than this PR campaign to shame your employer into refusing business that you don't personally like, with the added bonus that it won't run the risk of getting you branded a troublemaker or having to get fired. It's never a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That's a good point, to be balanced against the initial gut-reaction of not wanting your technology to be used militarily. Until fairly recently, war was waged by destroying the enemy *country*. Now we target individuals and small groups. We can do that now because we have accurate targeting.
In world war 2, only 20% of bombs hit within 1,000 feet of the target. Most hit within a mile radius, so the real target was something like "the west side of the city". By the gulf war, target radius was 10 meters, 30 feet. We could bomb a vehicle instead of a neighborhood.
If you are against war, it is clearly better to destroy a given vehicle than an entire neighborhood. Therefore more accurate targeting is better, it reduces deaths and injuries.
Google has become EXTREMELY abusive, in some areas.
By some measures, the U.S. government is the most violent government in the world. The US Has Military Bases in 80 Countries. All of Them Must Close.
Most violent? Are you kinding me? Without US policing around the world, other countries will have much more wars with each other. You can dislike US superpower, but you can't deny that the superpower bring peace to the world.
A targeting system for weapons is intended to kill people. Killing people is inherently evil, even if it may occasionally be necessary as "the lesser of two evils". This is not a partisan issue; it should be blindingly obvious to anyone with a moral compass.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
That article could have made some great points if it backed up any of its assertions with facts and data, and avoided terms like "white patriarchy" as its scapegoat.
Don't forget why it is that you're able to have the cushy jobs and the confidence to stick your necks out like that, snowflakes. That security comes from the barrel of a gun pointed at your country's enemies. That's why we have governments and why we have militaries: to defend your rights and freedoms against people who might want to take them from you. Living in a Potemkin techno-utopia you might forget that, but it's still true even if you don't realize it. This sort of thing isn't a good look. Makes you all look like children.
Absolute nonsense. The biggest terrorist organizations are Sunni and Shiâ(TM)a, and theyâ(TM)ve been committing terrorist acts against each other for a thousand years before the United States was created.
I seriously feel like I'm constantly living through the adage of "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Most of these people who don't want the military fail to remember what happened the last time we decided we didn't need a big military and we shouldn't get entangled in other people's fights. That fight came home to us here via an attack at Pearl Harbor which we were ill prepared to defend against because we stopped preparing to fight effectively.
My father is a US Marine, retired. One thing he told me that was instilled into him by the corps that has always stuck in my mind is "never start a fight, but if you find yourself in one be damned sure you finish it." I want the men and women who serve our country and our allies to be able to come home and the end of the day and hug their spouses and children. And, if that means that we give them the tools to do their job then I will be happy to help them get those tools.
I would be incredibly happy if we never again had to send men and women off to fight a war. And, I really would like to see the day when no one goes off to war. But, as long as there are bad people in this world who try to hurt people, dictators, despots, petty warlords, etc... then we need a military that can protect us and sometimes goes abroad to stop the bad people over there before they can come here and hurt people.
As for why we keep getting embroiled in wars much of it stems from a post WWII mentality developed by the US and the UK. If you've never read Churchill's writings I encourage you to. He may be a bit full of himself, but he laid out a lot of WWII and the immediate aftermath quite well and you will learn a lot of at least what he thought during the war years. But, he calls out that the US and UK looked at the war and never wanted something like it to happen again. They saw a rising threat in the old Soviet Union especially after the Soviets didn't retreat from the European countries they "liberated" during the war. And, those leaders decided the best defense was a strong offense.
So we keep seeking out conflicts while they hopefully remain "smaller" and before they can grow into something the likes of WWII. We keep trying to contain threats and neutralize them before they can become another Pearl Harbor or a Poland. Yes, that means we fight. Yes, that means some people die. But, better fewer people while a conflict can remain relatively small than after it has grown beyond hopes of containment and impacts too many people.
"We learn karate so that we don't have to use karate." Those are some of the first words my sensei in college ever said to my class in college. I think it's a very apt statement. We learn to fight, so that hopefully we never have to fight. Because if the other guy knows that we can and will fight back he might just not want to fight us at all. I know very few men and women in the military who want to get shot at or die. I know quite a few who want to go home to their spouses and their children and be proud of what they do and not be haunted by nightmares or suffer PTSD. Let's make sure they have the tools to do their jobs so that they can come home, and that they don't have to fight, or at least if they have to that they can limit who gets hurt.