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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.
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.
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.
In this day and age it's not hard to actually read the Constitution. There's no excuse for your particular ignorance.
The only thing in the Constitution that has anything in common with your claim is in Article I Section 2 clause 3, forbidding the states to do that without the consent of Congress.
Article I Section 8 clauses 12-13 grant Congress the powers to raise and support Armies, and to provide and maintain a Navy.
Article II Section 2 clause 1 declares the President to be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy.
I sympathize with the criticism that the federal government has far exceeded its constitutionally-granted powers, but a standing military ain't it.
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.
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.