Previously:<p><i>Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42938125">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42938125</a>
Naive people think that people are fundamentally good. We need military, weapons and surveillance to keep people safe.<p>Typically the naive people are just sheltered and/or young.
The fate of any sufficiently large American company is to become an instrument of American foriegn and domestic policy. More specifically, any big tech company at this point is a defense contractor, no different to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon or Northron Grumman.<p>At one point the British Empire controlled a quarter of the globe. The source of Britain's power was that it was a drug dealer empire, first tobacco, later opium.<p>American empire is arguably larger and more influential than the British Empire but instead of direct colonial control, the influence is economic through puppet regimes. The US is an arms dealer empire. WWI, WW2 and beyond greatly enriched the US.<p>You want to see what an arms dealer empire does with AI? Look no further than Lavender [1]. You may think you're removed from this, probably being in the imperial core. Unfortunately, the imperial boomerang [2] should make you question that assumption.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/" rel="nofollow">https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang</a>
A single entity that has the world mapped down to the street, that knows your search history, that has a device in your pocket and that owns a number of robotics interests is not one to be trifled with.
Despite this, and despite how USA is fumbbling right now internationally, Google is still on our side against actually harmful elementa of humanity.<p>For example: <a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/russia-targeting-signal-messenger" rel="nofollow">https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/rus...</a>
I was always queasy about mega corps saying "look at us, we are so good, we have outreach/pronouns/ESG", for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on. I much preferred that companies comply with regulation, without necessarily doing extra, and instead for the regulation to reflect values that the society needs from them.<p>Well, voila. The wind changed a month ago and this entire system of voluntary goodness seems gone with the wind.<p>But then again, I suppose, we've also been shown that regulation can be changed on a whim, at least in the current climate. Perhaps my preferred way would work with less extreme illiberals, but not this.