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Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract (gizmodo.com)
Kate Conger, reporting for Gizmodo: It's been nearly three months since many Google employees -- and the public -- learned about the company's decision to provide artificial intelligence to a controversial military pilot program known as Project Maven, which aims to speed up analysis of drone footage by automatically classifying images of objects and people. Now, about a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the company's continued involvement in Maven.
The resigning employees' frustrations range from particular ethical concerns over the use of artificial intelligence in drone warfare to broader worries about Google's political decisions -- and the erosion of user trust that could result from these actions. Many of them have written accounts of their decisions to leave the company, and their stories have been gathered and shared in an internal document, the contents of which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo.
The resigning employees' frustrations range from particular ethical concerns over the use of artificial intelligence in drone warfare to broader worries about Google's political decisions -- and the erosion of user trust that could result from these actions. Many of them have written accounts of their decisions to leave the company, and their stories have been gathered and shared in an internal document, the contents of which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo.
Google is an advertising company. DuckDuckGo is a search service.
> We're talking about AI being used to control drones.
No, we're talking about AI being used for analysis of the data provided by those drones. To weed through the thousands of hours of pictures to make it easier for humans to make decisions. At least, that was the original story that caused these people to promise to resign if it happened.
It's stuff these people were already developing AI to do - just a different user base. Rather than delivery targeted advertising, it might be something else targeting them.
There is still a human there. Maven is just an object-recognition system, that highlights objects in (usually low-resolution) drone video feeds. For example, it'll identify whether the 20-pixel object in the back of a pickup truck is actually a goat or a machine gun. It's still a human who decides whether to actually launch an attack or not.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
That's pretty much what already happens. Drone operators are told "we have a report of a training camp holding a meeting here... go find it". Then the op flies around looking for a meeting, sees a bunch of gathered people, and with no indication to the contrary, command orders the strike. The idea that it might be a wedding never crosses anyone's mind.
No. There are personnel separate from the drone operator who analyze the footage and advise on whether or not to engage. Video analysis is their only job, and they undergo specialized training and assessment using footage of previous missions to ensure that they're not just going to randomly blow up whatever they see.