Slashdot Mirror
Google Promises Ethical Principles To Guide Development of Military AI (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google is drawing up a set of guidelines that will steer its involvement in developing AI tools for the military, according to a report from The New York Times. What exactly these guidelines will stipulate isn't clear, but Google says they will include a ban on the use of artificial intelligence in weaponry. The principles are expected to be announced in full in the coming weeks. They are a response to the controversy over the company's decision to develop AI tools for the Pentagon that analyze drone surveillance footage.
Internal emails obtained by the Times show that Google was aware of the upset this news might cause. Chief scientist at Google Cloud, Fei-Fei Li, told colleagues that they should "avoid at ALL COSTS any mention or implication of AI" when announcing the Pentagon contract. "Weaponized AI is probably one of the most sensitized topics of AI -- if not THE most. This is red meat to the media to find all ways to damage Google," said Li. But Google never ended up making the announcement, and it has since been on the back foot defending its decision. The company says the technology it's helping to build for the Pentagon simply "flags images for human review" and is for "non-offensive uses only." The contract is also small by industry standards -- worth just $9 million to Google, according to the Times.
Internal emails obtained by the Times show that Google was aware of the upset this news might cause. Chief scientist at Google Cloud, Fei-Fei Li, told colleagues that they should "avoid at ALL COSTS any mention or implication of AI" when announcing the Pentagon contract. "Weaponized AI is probably one of the most sensitized topics of AI -- if not THE most. This is red meat to the media to find all ways to damage Google," said Li. But Google never ended up making the announcement, and it has since been on the back foot defending its decision. The company says the technology it's helping to build for the Pentagon simply "flags images for human review" and is for "non-offensive uses only." The contract is also small by industry standards -- worth just $9 million to Google, according to the Times.
Right after they removed "don't be evil" from the company handbook..
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What exactly these guidelines will stipulate isn't clear, but Google says they will include a ban on the use of artificial intelligence in weaponry.
Even if Google follows this, how is it going to prevent the DoD from weaponizing what Google develops? Google is clearly not naive so this all reeks of a public show for something they’ll never be able to enforce.
Came in here with modpoints to vote up anyone who actually read the article and noted that the contract is to supply image-analysis AI to flag content for human review. This is sensationalist journalism at its most flagrant.
Anyway, there's no one actually reading the linked story. You're all just spouting the sensationalist bullshit that /. cherry picked for you.
...
I find it funny how humanity always tries to put euphemisms and human traits on devices. Humans can be ethical, something that is artificial by its very nature is only as ethical as those who use it. I think Google needs to drop the pretense of them trying to be ethical in this particular project because from reading about it the DoD wants to analyze the effectiveness not only of drone strikes but to analyze reconnaissance footage as well using AI. It sounds like an interesting project but they need to drop the hint that weapon system development is anything but political and there's no ethics in politics.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The company says the technology it's helping to build for the Pentagon simply "flags images for human review" and is for "non-offensive uses only."
There is no such thing when it comes to the military. "Flag images for human review"? WTF do they think humans IN THE MILITARY are going to do with such information? Furthermore once the technology is in the hands of the armed forces there is fuck-all Google can do to control how they use it.
This is basically the exact plot of the movie Real Genius. The smart geeks fail to comprehend what happens to military funded technology in the hands of the military.