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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..
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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.
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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"
Do no evil..........“Four legs good, two legs bad.”
Do the right thing..............“Four legs good, two legs BETTER!"
Military AI............"already it was impossible to say which was which."
WWI saw trench warfare, WWII saw highly mechanized assaults and WWIII will see AI-driven drones and land equipment hunting humans. Why risk hundreds of thousands of troops when you can cheaply manufacture thousands of weaponized robots to eliminate anything that moves in a specific area?
Even if Google chooses to implement ethical guidelines in military AI, you can be assured others won't.
How is developing anything for the military ethical?
How's it not ethical?
Are we so naive as to think that having a strong and capable military is somehow unnecessary in today's world?
It amazes me how often I hear this view. Have we forgotten the lessons of WW1 so soon? Was the catastrophe of WW2, that demonstrated AGAIN the folly of not being prepared not enough of a reminder? History is rife with reasons why having a strong and capable military is both necessary and ethical because it prevents war, shortens those that break out and limits the death and destruction they cause.
Those who know history are doomed to helplessly watch while those who don't know history repeat it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So we are only doomed to repeat history and not learn from it then?
Even in that case, doesn't having an already strong and capable military beat having to go "total war" such as in WW2?
The primary cause of WW2 was weakness in the face of aggression, both in Europe and in the Pacific. Had the USA not been on a pacifist kick and had been properly arming itself, Japan would have never tried their war and Germany would have easily been defeated in short order. Even if war had been inevitable in WW2, had the USA been ready the pain suffering and death of the war would have been much less as the war would have been much shorter.
Tell me again why we need to repeat this mistake a third time in modern history?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
A list of legal questions will be asked of the AI.
Is the drone over a free fire zone? Yes.
Is something moving? Yes.
Non human movement? Human movement.
Confirm human? Yes human.
Is it really a human? Yes. Confirmed a human in the free fire zone.
Is the human running away? Yes. Drone away.
Is the human well disciplined and not running away? Yes. Drone away.
The new AI ethics questions will look to the amount of work the AI has to do per shift and consider drone rights.
The AI will be giving time to power down between shifts and not asked to perform a lot of extra calculations per mission. The drone will be well maintained by contractors between missions.
Every use of an AI drone will always involve a human. Contractors will review the AI system at all time to ensure only humans are detected by the AI in the free fire zone.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Google Promises Ethical Principles To Guide Development of Military AI
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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I didn't bring up ethics, the post I was responding to did. I was merely pointing out the fact that it is indeed ethical to do work for the military because military power is necessary for the common good.
I would disagree with your view that the military is a necessary evil. Having a military is necessary but it's not evil any more than owning a firearm is evil. The issue is how it's used, simply having them is neither good nor bad.
However, Given that you agree that a military is necessary, working for them must be ethical which leaves us only discussing what's the ethical way to use the power.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Seriously? It's not obvious from history what happens in response to weak military capacity?
It may be speculation but it's obvious from history that wars are rarely started when the outcome is obviously a given. Japan would have NEVER risked Perl Harbor had we been on a war capable footing in time. They knew it was a huge risk as it was, and had they known that this gambit wouldn't put the USA on it's heels long enough to build up a protection of their island, they would not have tried it.
So yea, this is speculation, but put in historical context, it's not without it's merits or parallels in history. Had we been armed and ready for war, we would have likely not had to fight that bloody Pacific war, and not fighting that war would have allowed us to effect the problem in Europe much quicker. Imaging if we could have invaded Europe 2 years sooner? Or if we had the necessary forces to hold and expand Dunkirk because we had a Navy presence in the med? WW2 would have been quite different.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Given that SOMEone is going to weaponize ai, isn't nicer to know who we're supposed to be watching? Better to know it's google than be blind to the fact that it's probably also being developed in some under ice bunker in the arctic by Killco Inc. Better the evil you know than the one you don't.