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Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work To Grow Exponentially (theintercept.com)
In March, Google secretly signed an agreement with the Pentagon to provide cutting edge AI technology for drone warfare, causing about a dozen Google employees to resign in protest and thousands to sign a petition calling for an end to the contract. Google has since tried to quash the dissent, claiming that the contract was "only" for $9 million, according to the New York Times. Internal company emails obtained by The Intercept tell a different story: The September emails show that Google's business development arm expected the military drone artificial intelligence revenue to ramp up from an initial $15 million to an eventual $250 million per year. In fact, one month after news of the contract broke, the Pentagon allocated an additional $100 million to Project Maven [the endeavor designed to help drone operators recognize images captured on the battlefield]. The internal Google email chain also notes that several big tech players competed to win the Project Maven contract. Other tech firms such as Amazon were in the running, one Google executive involved in negotiations wrote. (Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.) Rather than serving solely as a minor experiment for the military, Google executives on the thread stated that Project Maven was "directly related" to a major cloud computing contract worth billions of dollars that other Silicon Valley firms are competing to win. The emails further note that Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing arm of Amazon, "has some work loads" related to Project Maven.
If you define "the military objectives of my side are good, and those of their side are evil", then you can justify almost anything that helps you win.
Clearly, using algorithms to pre-sort images, while useful in its own right, is just the start. The obvious followup is having drones designed such that if they're jammed, they can still attempt to carry out their mission as best as they can on their own (thus reducing or eliminating the military effectiveness of jamming as an anti-drone weapon; Russia has gotten very good at such electronic warfare).
Jesus: "Son of a
Have you ever worked for the DoD as a contractor? I have and this nonsense about Google only doing work for the DoD that is “ethical” is laughable. The military-industrial conplex is about the least ethical group of people you can find.