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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.
They were all in when it was a creepy private data mining operation, but do something to support the legitimate aims of government and defend the nation, and it goes against their precious principles.
We are creating a generation of sociopaths, who have inverted their priorities and have no notion of right or wrong.
Now they'll be a defense contractor like Boeing et al. While I can understand a company wanting to make money how does this line up with "Do no harm?"
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I'd have a hard time employing folks who "publicly" resigned in protest. My reason is that they'd similarly judge my company, and bring the wrong type of attention to my company. EVERYONE asks, "so, why'd you quit?"
That said, this type of move shows passion and putting their money where their mouth is. I really admire their conviction. Good for them.
I personally think Google has lost their moral compass. Stuff I've read about SREs doing, in flagging "bad" people who visit, would be grounds for immediate dismissal as traditional companies. Maybe, someday, ad words stop subsidizing the Googlers who get to go off and play on cool stuff, and protest and stuff. Until then, this ad word supported fantasy land will continue.
At this time we may begin to wonder whether we have passed Peak Google. Now that the company is large enough to get itself tangled up in politics, people from all political persuasions are watching its every move and looking for things to get upset about. The privacy issue could also be Google's biggest systemic problem, raising distrust in the company similar to IBM and Microsoft before it. We know how this ends -- a long, slow decline.
Personally, I'm very happy with DuckDuckGo. In just a few years it went from completely-unusable to a perfectly fine Google alternative. And I certainly wouldn't trust my email to any server other than my own.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
While there are many classically liberal views I agree with, sometimes I think they just go too far. National defense is a critical industry for the survival of the country and, although the United States is not perfect and certain has its share of blame for tragedies in the world, global dominance by Russia or China would be far, far worse..
In national defense, we've been falling backward (in relation to Russia and China) for the last few decades. Our main battle tanks are two generations behind Russia's and their air defense systems are also greatly enhanced. Iran successfully took over one of our most sophisticated drones and captured in, a couple years ago, using electronic warfare... Although we have the F-22 and the F-35 jets, we are falling in most other areas and are even behind in some.
Also, the cost of war is very prohibitive for us as Congress requires subcontractors in virtually every state to fund any new project. Both potential enemies can easily outlast us in a protracted war, financially.
And of course there is that AI in combat is not only inevitable but moving ahead at a very fast pace in both China and Russia. Although U.S. services still require a human in the loop of any kill decision, Russia absolutely does not. They are allowing agent kill decisions by default. This isn't a should we are shouldn't be ethical issue. This is about survival.
I doubt they'll be blacklisted, but if they are, nothing wrong with quitting the industry and working for an entity that actually has a conscience. Do education/development work in poorer parts of the US with an NGO. Go back to school, get an M.D. or nursing degree. Actually help fellow humans or do good research.
Life's too short to work in the ad-tech or military murder industries for the rest of one's life.
You're more likely to be killed slipping in a bathtub or crossing the street than in a terrorist attack in the US. We grossly over-reacted after 9/11. What we should have done is blockaded, sanctioned, and embargoed Saudi Arabia, the source of funding for the perpetrators that caused 9/11. Would have been cheap AND effective, even if we'd have felt some pain as far as oil prices in the short run.
But no, we were just itching to use the toys that we didn't have a chance to use during the Cold War. We wasted a few trillion and made the world LESS safe.
I remember when Google launched and the company touted its motto "Don't be evil". I guess the employees believe assisting the military in its drone program is a form of evil; And, while some may complain that a dozen people quitting doesn't amount to a hill of beans, I give those employees one heck of a lot of credit for standing up for what they believe in in a way most of us will never know.
Allow me to explain this to those of you who don't get it: These people are 'quitting in protest' because they didn't sign up to work on weapons of war, and they have every right to quit over this because otherwise they're not living according to their own conscience. Having worked in the defense industry (by the way, what we worked on was training systems, not weapons systems; what we developed helped keep soldiers safe) it's far from the first time someone has made a decision like this, and in fact people who have objections to contributing to the development of deadly weapons of war very often make this clear when they're interviewing for a job. These people clearly did not forsee this and are now acting accordingly and do not deserve to be criticized for that.
..oh, and by the way: It's inevitable that the so-called 'AI' (inaptly named; is really not much more than 'pseudo-intelligence' at best) will make mistakes, and those mistakes will likely mean non-combatants becoming collateral damage. That's at the core of why they're quitting, and I for one don't blame them one bit.
1. AI and expert systems are going to be a standard in war regardless of what google does or doesn't do.
2. The US government is hardly the only power trying to integrate this tech into its military.
3. For all the largely LARPy ire at US foreign policy, what is the alternative hegemonic power you would prefer from the available contenders? Currently - Russia, China, maybe one of the Islamic countries or a coalition there of Pakistan/Turkey/Iran/etc. Of those which would you prefer to be the hegemonic power? Because Switzerland isn't a contender, sweethearts.
Given the above reality... What does protest quitting Google do?
Its meaningless virtue signaling. It accomplishes nothing productive. And even if it did slow or shut down the US development of AI enhanced weapons, that would only give one of the other major powers an advantage. And since literally every single one of those powers is if anything more questionable in its ethics regarding war... What are you really doing here?
I get it. We don't live in an ideal world. This world has war. We kill each other on occasion. But that isn't going to stop. Idealism is a sad substitute for sound foreign policy.
As the line goes "if you desire peace, prepare for war."
I desire peace. And I know that if I were sent into the fires of a war, I would want the best weapons my country could supply for me. I cannot therefore in good conscience frustrate the development or deployment of any equipment or programs for our people that I would want for myself in the same situation. I want to live. I want to live in peace and security. And the only way that is going to happen on this planet short of submitting to enslavement... is to be formidable.
By all means, refuse to work on Google's AI project. It is a free country. No one will force you to work where you do not wish to work. But it is meaningless.
The tech will get developed and become standard. Everyone knows this. Opposing it is futile.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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.
Yes. I think it's because they don't want to attack. Borders are relatively open. Weapons are readily available (if not guns, then cars or knives). Yet the number of terror attacks in the US is statistically tiny.
My point is that you have employment choices in the US (or even abroad) if you're a human with a conscience.
Thanks for pointing that out. I should've RTFA.
It's interesting that this is actually standard practice when it comes to intelligence or military applications. You're told when you sign up for any intelligence position is that if you have a moral issue, you first take it up with your superior, if that isn't satisfactory then you resign. It's also a difficult call too, imagine how many scientists felt during the development of the nuclear bomb.
Harming one's legitimate enemies is not only not evil, but perfectly just and, indeed, noble.
People declare others to be their "enemies" for all sorts of idiotic and irrational reasons. Tribalism not the least among them. Just because you don't like someone doesn't make harming them a justifiable activity. I could not disagree more with your statement as it stands. There is nothing "noble" about harming anyone. Sometimes it is necessary and occasionally it is just. But noble? No.
Sounds like a very useful algorithm. I'm sure some snowflake will pay you good money for that.
I don't understand the objection to precision drone strikes. Would the objects prefer to just fire a missile in the general area and kill everyone in the vicinity? Would they prefer dumb drones that can't determine who the target is and kills the wrong people?
Yes, they would. You see, their real objection to the military has nothing to do with innocents being killed. They just hate the very idea of the military as a whole. Even if every single strike took out some horrible monster of a man, and didn't harm a single innocent, they would still be opposed to it. The problem, in that case, is that they would have no way to rationally voice their opposition, so they need civilian casualties. They need weddings being blown up; the more the better. It lets them rant and rave about how horrible the military is; anything which reduces the civilian body count runs contrary to their interests.
No one does what the U.S. does. Russia, China, bumbfuckistan don't have a drone murder program blowing up innocent people for completely bullshit reasons. And the terrorist countries that come the closest to doing so, Saudi Arabia and Israel, are your buddies using your weapons.
You even know that the entire defense budget of Russia is half the size of the last increase to the American Imperial budget? We're talking 45 billion dollars a year next to over a trillion.
The United States could dismiss the entire Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force tomorrow and have more than enough for it's actual defense needs. You even seen a globe, bro? The United States is surrounded by the world's largest oceans and two friendly allies. You've faced one invasion in your entire history, 200 years ago, and for a war you started.
Russia's entire defense budget is $45 billion dollars. You spend over a trillion. The United States doesn't need to defend itself from the rest of the world. The rest of the world needs to defend itself from the United States.
It's not Russia occupying Europe with 30 installations in Germany alone. It's not China starting wars for bullshit reasons and assassinating people on the other side of the planet from it. It's all you. It's only you, and your terrorist allies Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Maybe it would be a good idea to let Google help process the footage to see who and what got blown up?
Seriously though, the data is already there, now suddenly it's a big moral dilemma to process it and understand what's going on?
Used to keep people friendly until they were large enough to show their true colors. Corporations lie and they lie about important stuff. So this is not really a surprise at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The linked article says Google is basically a contractor helping with configuration & setup of open source tools; and even if they backed out the same project could be done by other companies too.
... which won't just lead to an ineffective system, it will only mean more overspending until the military does have the capabilities it wants.
If this is true, then I find it hard to be so upset at them. Agreed, Google's level of expertise in setting up ML systems is far more advanced than most smaller companies, and probably a bit ahead of even their biggest competitors. However, its basically an installation that would happen with or without them; and more likely to be misconfigured if someone else is the military vendor
So, why not let the ML experts create a usable system which will only save some time and money over them turning down the wad of military cash and seeing someone else get it? Of course, I'm assuming that the claim of everything used being existing open source is actually true.
At the end of the day, all these people gave up is their jobs with Google. They're not going to stop the ball rolling with this act. There's plenty of people with less-than-perfect moral compass that'll fill those shoes.
Commendable, but I think it'd been much braver to keep your job and fight against this from the inside. Quitting is just quitting.
It was lucky you came along to explain their 'real objection' to the military. You really showed that strawman who's boss.
Another side of the argument, are the people than think that wars should be messy. It should be a difficult choice whether or not to start one. Save them for the big stuff. Once they become too clean they become too easy to justify they become too easy to start. Yea sure take out that horrible monster of a man. And once they are all gone, do you take out the bad monsters of a man, and then the monster of a man, and then the bad man, etc. Little Rocket Man causing trouble again, assassinate. Putin getting into your business, assassinate. Kim dotcom downloading all your movies, assassinate. People in other countries telling Americans how to vote, assassinate. People in other countries telling you things you'd rather not hear, assassinate.
But I totally kicked the shit out of my strawman.