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Google Is Quietly Providing AI Technology for Drone Strike Targeting Project

19 points by seagullz 9y ago

throwaway84742 9y ago
This will go over well on Memegen for sure.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Does it matter though? If someone's complaining about it on Memegen, it still means they're being paid to help Google profit. This may be Google's "IBM helping the Nazis target Jews" moment, the ethical engineer cannot work there.
  - throwaway84742 9y ago
    You know, there’s this recent tendency to call people Nazis for no reason that I really dislike. Fact is, you don’t know the details of what they have signed up to do, and therefore you can’t make a determination as to the moral standing of all this. For all we know this could very well reduce the overall number of casualties by e.g. spotting IEDs, or letting soldiers avoid areas with high concentration of insurgents if fighting would detract from the main mission. Instead we get histrionics and “killing Jews” comments. I get it, it’s a “woke” thing to do. But there’s a “crying wolf” component to it that one needs to bear in mind as well. There might come time when you’d actually want people to pay attention to you.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Oh, I am not one to throw this around lightly, and I agree with your general view on people who do. Unfortunately, in the world we live in today, it's hard to differentiate worthy examples with meaningless flotsam. Perhaps a better analogy would be the development of the atomic bomb. We now have engineers doing engineering for engineering's sake, developing something that will almost certainly be used to kill thousands of people (or more). And it doesn't matter what Google thinks it will use it for, or what Google wants it to be used for. Our government wants drones that can assassinate people better with dubious or nonexistent evidence of their crimes. If you give them the technology to do it better, they will use it, even if you didn't intend it. Fundamentally, Hillary Clinton's complicity in our drone program ended up being the primary reason I couldn't bring myself to cast a vote for her (I didn't vote Trump either, mind you).
      - throwaway84742 9y ago
        One thing you’re missing once again is that the development of nukes has so far been a net positive. MAD pretty much excludes the possibility that major powers will ever be at war with each other again. Potentially hundreds of millions of people got to live their lives in full rather than be mowed down by conventional weapons in an all out war of attrition.
joshribakoff 9y ago
So basically this is like the movie "The Terminator" except a human operator has to hit "yes" on an "are you sure" dialog. Let's hope that google has better confirmation dialogs than the Hawaii emergency alert system has.

19 points by seagullz 9y ago

throwaway84742 9y ago

This will go over well on Memegen for sure.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Does it matter though? If someone's complaining about it on Memegen, it still means they're being paid to help Google profit. This may be Google's "IBM helping the Nazis target Jews" moment, the ethical engineer cannot work there.
- throwaway84742 9y ago
  You know, there’s this recent tendency to call people Nazis for no reason that I really dislike. Fact is, you don’t know the details of what they have signed up to do, and therefore you can’t make a determination as to the moral standing of all this. For all we know this could very well reduce the overall number of casualties by e.g. spotting IEDs, or letting soldiers avoid areas with high concentration of insurgents if fighting would detract from the main mission. Instead we get histrionics and “killing Jews” comments. I get it, it’s a “woke” thing to do. But there’s a “crying wolf” component to it that one needs to bear in mind as well. There might come time when you’d actually want people to pay attention to you.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Oh, I am not one to throw this around lightly, and I agree with your general view on people who do. Unfortunately, in the world we live in today, it's hard to differentiate worthy examples with meaningless flotsam. Perhaps a better analogy would be the development of the atomic bomb. We now have engineers doing engineering for engineering's sake, developing something that will almost certainly be used to kill thousands of people (or more). And it doesn't matter what Google thinks it will use it for, or what Google wants it to be used for. Our government wants drones that can assassinate people better with dubious or nonexistent evidence of their crimes. If you give them the technology to do it better, they will use it, even if you didn't intend it. Fundamentally, Hillary Clinton's complicity in our drone program ended up being the primary reason I couldn't bring myself to cast a vote for her (I didn't vote Trump either, mind you).
    - throwaway84742 9y ago
      One thing you’re missing once again is that the development of nukes has so far been a net positive. MAD pretty much excludes the possibility that major powers will ever be at war with each other again. Potentially hundreds of millions of people got to live their lives in full rather than be mowed down by conventional weapons in an all out war of attrition.

joshribakoff 9y ago

So basically this is like the movie "The Terminator" except a human operator has to hit "yes" on an "are you sure" dialog. Let's hope that google has better confirmation dialogs than the Hawaii emergency alert system has.