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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.
Google announces a massive layoff of more than 3100 employees after it was found they said something politically incorrect or something like that... whatever.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
https://www.reddit.com/r/Writi...
(worth a short read and funny as heck)
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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.
Well, that's it. This discussion's pretty well covered, now.
Seriously, this is exactly the dilemma. Back when I did defense work (connected distantly to attacks), nobody ever had intention of hitting civilians. It was bad intel, bad guidance, or just a plain and simple screwup. We just kept trying to be better, adding more confirmations, better cameras, better training... and slowly things got better.
None of those improvements were cheap. A small improvement in image quality might mean a few hundred million dollars in expenses, mostly in paperwork to track exactly what work happened where and how, but if it provides the critical information to prevent a single bad mission, it's worth the price.
It's not a popular opinion, but it seems to me that war is inevitable. 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.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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.
As a conservative, I have to admit I pretty much poo-pooh'd the Left's paranoia being victimized by big data and government; TBTH I assumed it would probably end up being my side that was going to be doing any of the oppressive stuff so I was probably ok.
But how the tables have turned: now the Leftists at Google have made me actually start to get nervous about how they're going to use my data - my searches, my friends, the things I think are important - against me "for my own good" of course.
I watch Demolition Ranch and occasionally watch gun reviews on Youtube. Has google accumulated a "crazy ass gun fanatic" file on me, and thus decided to single me out for special watching, filtering what I'm going to get from searches or even Cambridge Analytica-style aggressive, 'therapeutic' propaganda to "correct" my clearly aberrant leanings?
Thanks google, for making me think like the paranoid nutballs I generally mock.
-Styopa
History has taught us, war is a zero sum game. The only way to win is not to play.
This is by far the stupidest comment I've read in recent history. A zero sum game is, by definition, one in which a win for one side is a proportional loss for the other. If I want to play and you don't, you lose by default.
You have to be completely ignorant of human history to decide that "not playing" is a winning move.
Considering the U.S. and Soviet Union never went to direct war against each other, and that the eventual resolution to the Cold War was based on economics and politics, it seems to have worked. If you look at all the wars since Nagasaki was bombed, they've between two non-nuclear states, or between a nuclear state and a non-nuclear state. The nuclear states have steadfastly avoided direct war against each other. Even when one forcibly invades and annexes territory which belongs to a non-nuclear state that other nuclear states have sworn to defend (ironically in exchange for giving up their nukes).
War is a zero sum game. But choosing not to play does not mean you're no longer a player - it does not raise an invincible shield around you. You simply get attacked and conquered by someone who plays, and the effect of your choice is nullified when you cease to exist. Your assets and resources get transferred to your conquerer. Choosing not to play doesn't mean you don't participate in the zero sum the game; it means you end up guaranteed to in the negative half of the zero sum game. It's like thermodynamics. Everyone likes to dream of all the things that are possible if you could simply quit the game. But the reality is that you're not allowed to quit. Even if every country and every person on Earth disarmed, all it would take is for one person to sharpen a stick and mug someone with it to start the process all over again.
War exists because of a simple economic reality - it's often cheaper to simply take assets and resources from your neighbors rather than work to build them up yourself. If you abstain from preparing for war, you do nothing to change that fundamental economic incentive. The way to avoid war is to make it more expensive for someone to take your assets and resources from you, than they stand to gain by taking them.
From an engineering perspective, you strive to make the world a better place, and to protect the better place you've made. If your government chooses to misuse the tools you've created to wage unjust wars, then the solution to that is a political modification of your government, not abstention. Abstention means someone who doesn't share your ideals invades and takes everything you've created for themselves.
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.
The problem is that we're not at war. Or, maybe more accurately, we've always been at war with Eurasia. Improved accuracy finally realizes the dream of the US government to kill individuals from the air--in the future maybe from orbit. The concept that this is about protecting civilians is pretty laughable though.
In World War 2 if they had better targeting they would have killed more civilians, not less. The US and UK didn't firebomb Dresden and Tokyo by accident. At some level civilians were considered an acceptable target because they provided the continued means to wage war. Do you honestly think this is radically different today? Better facial recognition might improve accuracy on only killing the intended target, but are any of the intended targets not civilians? We're left with the words of US Intelligence to judge whether a person deserves execution.
I find the power and convenience of drone strikes frightening. I don't think making them better in any way is actually a real improvement.
PS - The real truth to me is the Military Industrial Complex wants the targeting because it costs money. As another poster pointed out, a small improvement in improving the targeting costs millions. Slightly better body armor costs millions more. It's all a game to drive up the cost of war because all the feigning of concern for life is good for business. At best that is secondary because clearly the goal is to kill people.