The great news is that this is news. Google did a thing they thought was fine. They drew a line in the Sand and said we won't build a box that kills.
Employees said that's not good enough. Because you're building a box that targets and makes killing easier.<p>I'm thrilled that this discussion is coming up and leaking out into the rest of the world because we need to talk about it.<p>Because the smart, capable people here need to think about our ethical obligation not to create terrible weapons. I assure you AI tracking in a weapon system is a terrible weapon. The test is easy. Imagine yourself on the looking at the sharp end of the weapon. Does it feel like you're in a nightmare? That's a terrible weapon.
Granted, smart, capable people know not to misuse a terrible weapon, but the last thing you do when you create something is the act of relinquishing control. And I assure you the world is full of people who cannot or choose not to consider the repercussions of their actions. A weapon once created will be misused.<p>We all therefore have an obligation not to create such things.
Turn your attention towards creations which create the world you want to live in and never work on terrible weapons.<p>I hope that this comment causes a response. I hope that it kicks off a debate. I trust that my argument is sound and I look forward to exploring the nuances of it with all of you.
I'm glad that google's internal culture is healthy enough for this. I wonder how the internal conversations about affecting politics, issues of privacy, etc. look..<p>However, I really think it would be better if these debates happened somewhere that the public could see. It has to be a biased debate when every participant is an employee of the company.
Companies like Google making company culture such a visible part of their identity strikes me as the kind of wise foolishness that you find a lot in mythical narratives. Sure, you will get some very motivated employees that swallow the kool-aid, but if you think those employees' loyalties are with you, you better think again. They're loyal to the idea that you sold them on, to the gospel that you preached.<p>Once they get it in their heads that the road you're leading them on is going to hell and not heaven, there's gonna be a reckoning. Now the faithful are going to start questioning things they wouldn't allow themselves to question years ago. Is making all this software so that Google can profit off of collecting people's data worthwhile?<p>I hope at least one Google exec is forced to sell a yacht over this. But what I really want is that we find a way to force more accountability onto these assholes. I'm happy it happened, but I think we're going to start seeing a shift away from companies making culture such a visible part of their identity as Google did.
> However, he said he thought that it was better for peace if the world’s militaries were intertwined with international organizations like Google rather than working solely with nationalistic defense contractors.<p>I remember when sergey said nearly the same thing about china.
>However, [Brin] said he thought that it was better for peace if the world’s militaries were intertwined with international organizations like Google rather than working solely with nationalistic defense contractors.<p>You could make an argument that to maximize global wellbeing that that is the better strategy? Focus on stuff to avoid civilian casualties rather than the nastier possibilities? Maybe spin it off into a specific division so people don't have to work there.<p>AI is going to get used in warfare but we may have a choice between kill all the humans or take out the weapons while not killing humans.
Often I hear about people who refuse some contract because of ethical reserves. But, we should have more people with ethical sensibility working on military projects, not less. If the only people working on military projects are sociopaths, what future are we building?
Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. DARPA funded the early internet, DARPA funded AI and NLP research, DARPA funded computer vision.<p>It's not new, it's been going on forever - certainly in our lifetimes.
I find this entire situation so odd. None of these people leaving Google over Project Maven had any issues with working for the largest corporate spy agency in the world. They were fine with massive data collection in the pursuit of serving people better ads. But helping analysts find objects in imagery? That’s a bridge too far.
Why has this gone on so long? Surely the optics are worse than the revenue at this point. “We hear you, we are canceling this, we deeply apologize,” blah blah.
my only comment is that the opportunity to stop weaponized AI is long long long gone. the barriers to entry for modern machine learning methods are just so low and the military benefits are there. Near peer states are going to do this and we frankly cannot stop them. the train has left the station...<p>sidenote: my impression is the next block of the small diameter bomb has a semi-autonomous feature where it can glide over a target area without a pre-sighted target-use some computer vision-recognize a tank- adjust its trajectory to hit the tank. all without a man-in-the-loop. pretty nifty.<p>edit: also these jobs are literally hiring right now. you can polish up your cv and send it to a DOD lab and in a few months you will be using deep learning to kill. SICK!
I have no pacifist objections to Google partnering with the Pentagon, I just don't think it's very smart for what amounts to be an information platform to be opening itself too easily to accusations of bias(even though everyone would know it's there anyway).<p>One scenario I would plan for if I were Google is if with the emergence of webassembly that an open source browser-based mobile OS like Firefox OS might become more viable. I could definitely see some nations(I.E. Russia and China... but I could see South Korea's phone manufacturers being in favor... and many EU nations too if it were open source) being very uneasy with a US Corporation that is a pentagon contractor whose government already threatened to withhold android software to ZTE. With getting close to the Pentagon and after the ZTE threat, it will be harder to make a fuss if Russia and China were to outright ban Android.
>which uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes.<p>Is that related to "select all tiles with X" on captcha?
It often had other labels..
<a href="https://twitter.com/lachrob/status/831691552028241921" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/lachrob/status/831691552028241921</a>
I am amused that _this_ of all things was what it took to get googlers to stop and take a look at what they're doing.<p>I work somewhere that has talent bouncing to/from a military contractor and a common attitude I see is way more comfortable with the military doing "what it takes" within the rules of engagement to protect the nation than what our own golden boys in the valley are doing for dollars.