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Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage
- IntronExon 9y agoI suppose they can tell themselves that they’re not strictly helping to kill people, just making the killing more efficient. How very IBM of them.
- dmitrygr 9y agoWhat would you suggest engineers who work at Google but not on this do? Your IBM example is actually relatively accurate. IBM also had a lot of people working on things that we're not related to war crimes.
- IntronExon 9y agoThe answer is obvious, but not easy or likely. If Google stood to lose their workforce as a result, this would not be happening. Of course people like comfort and money too much to do that, and they’ll tell themselves it’s not their responsibility and hey, someone else will happily take their job. This is after all, a workforce that has concluded that privacy is something to be monetized and subverted at every turn for similar reasons.
- lallysingh 9y agoThere are plenty of other companies in the valley
- aylmao 9y agoThere's only one Google though
- lallysingh 9y agoGoogle's not that big of a deal. It's got plenty of negatives. And the food is at best OK.
- aylmao 9y agoOh yeah, I totally agree. They just do a very good job at marketing their jobs. I mean, no other company has a movie that revolves entirely around how desirable an internship with them is supposed to be [1]. [1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/
- ultrasounder 9y agoHey Dimitry, Cant wait to see what new project you come up with? Really loved your projects and most importantly detailed write ups. Esp, the one where you booted Linux on a AVR. That was Nuts. Cheers
- dmitrygr 9y agoThanks! I'll post something new in a few weeks on my site :)
- ultrasounder 9y agoLooking forward to it!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ProAm 9y agoGovernment contracts are extremely lucrative and usually long term, most companies would accept this work.
- pdeuchler 9y agoMost companies are run by people with souls, so I doubt this. Most corporations though, there you might have a point.
- parent5446 9y agoNot sure what you consider the difference between a "company" and a "corporation", but I know a lot of people who work for small government contractors that definitely have "souls". Not everybody has the same ethical standpoint on military technology.
- pdeuchler 9y agoI know many people who work for large multi-national defense contractors that definitely have "souls" as well, but hiding behind moral relativism won't save you from the fact that in the real world moral bright lines exist within societal contexts. And that said, I'm fairly confident how history will see our current drone program.
- kridsdale1 9y agoHow does history see the Enigma crackers? Thousands of nonconsenting Germans were no doubt killed by the “good guys” as a result of the work done by our computer science heroes.
- EggsOnToast 9y agoI'm not sure why you're so dismissive of moral relativism in this context when it's incredibly relevant. Someone who believes that developing and exploring this technology will enable us to save the lives of soldiers and better prepare to encounter the technology in the wild is going to have very different opinions than someone who views it as yet another tool to oppress the third world with. Both people hold ethical beliefs that consider and value humanitarian consequences. Edit: I was slowed down for posting too fast so I'm adding my reply to IntronExon here: It's an interesting hypothetical but I'd argue its appeal is mostly in its simplicity with little evidence to support the claim. The instances you've cited happened either due to a failure of accurate intelligence or because intelligence indicated the structure was being used by enemy combatants. It's very possible to arrive at the conclusion that any unnecessary casualties which occurred happened as a result of poor military intelligence which better reconnaissance drones could help with. It's equally possible that someone working on this kind of technology could see its field use against groups like ISIS as evidence that weaponized drones are a useful tool in fighting terrorist organizations. Obviously neither of these will be true in every instance, but without strong evidence it's hard to believe that the matter is as simple as "some people are just unemphatic".
- blackrock 9y agoIt looks like Google is going to be the next 800-pound gorilla in the Military Industrial Complex.
- killjoywashere 9y agoI seriously doubt Google wants to be beholden to Republican stewardship of the US Government budget cycle.
- macawfish 9y agoWhen's the last time GOP leadership cut military spending though?
- TallGuyShort 9y agoWhen's the last time Democrats put up much resistance to the war we still haven't declared? My money is on military contracts being reliably lucrative for the foreseeable future regardless of any reasonably possible election outcome in the next few years.
- sitkack 9y agoThen why did they sell Boston Dynamics? Or did they ...
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoThey tried to sell it but nobody wanted it, AFAIK. Note that when they bought Boston Dynamics they made a big deal about not renewing military contracts because they didn't want to be in the business of autonomous weaponry. Look how a mere couple years has changed things.
- sitkack 9y agoThey sold to SoftBank btw, this was widely reported.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- natecavanaugh 9y agoEthically, I wonder if this would be any different if Google built a similar software for consumer applications and licensed it similarly to Android being used for surveillance in both the US and far more paranoid governments. I would imagine that this allows both Google and the US government to have far more insight and control over the direction of this and possible applications. Not to dismiss the obvious ethical issues of Google having possibly harmful incentives and having their hands tied by the US government financially and legally, but all things considered, I think the main difference here is that Google is already doing this on a massively large scale for the sake of selling ads. It is possible this can help save lives.
- pluma 9y ago> It is possible this can help save lives. Please don't fall for this rhetoric. The technology helps killing people, not save lives. Saving lives means preventing people from being killed. You can't prove any of the drone strikes ever helped preventing people from being killed. You can prove a lot of people (including people most normal human beings would consider civilians) did get killed. And even if killing the target helped save lives you can't prove those lives couldn't have been saved any other way. Drone strikes don't save lives. Drone strikes take lives. The reason we use to justify taking those lives is that they might help save other lives. But mostly drone strikes are trading the guaranteed death of foreigners for the possibility of saving American lives.
- ehsankia 9y ago> You can prove a lot of people (including people most normal human beings would consider civilians) did get killed. Drone strike have and will continue to take place, no matter what Google does. But as you very correctly mention, as it is right now, many innocent civilians accidentally get killed. Doesn't it then directly follow that if said drone strikes become more accurate, then less people (or innocent civilians) will be killed?
- natecavanaugh 9y agoThis may get me some downvotes, but I imagine that the same ethical issue exists with any weapon. Guns and bullets exist to kill, and in both human society and the animal kingdom, elimination of a few people can increase the overall population and livelihood of the entire group. I think what you're arguing is about effectiveness of those weapons, not their use. However, I truly believe that the right direction for life on this planet is the elimination of death of people or animals. Sure, you could take a bullet to every jaywalker or tax cheat, but I think we've learned more productive ways to handle those situations, and I hope/pray that we'll learn new ways in how to handle terrorists and other violent criminals that could lead to their redemption. But in the meantime, we may have to accept a lesser of two evils while searching for a good, and I think more intelligent and selective killing is better than widespread killing. My big worry isn't so much the killing part (not because it's foreigners, but because they are hopefully only attacking murderers), but the erasure of civil rights via intelligent surveillance employed in the name of security. That to me seems far more insidious and dangerous (which of course is easy to say when it's not my life or my family's that's being ended, but I'm speaking collectively rather than individually there).
- forapurpose 9y agoLet's be completely speculative and alarmist about the potential of AI: It could be like developing nuclear weapons first; if the US gets military AI wrong, it could quickly become a poor vassal state to the world's new superpower.[0] People are alarmist and speculative because AI's potential is unknown. If the potential of the new blockchain technology is unknown then you can wait and see what happens. But given the stakes with military AI, you can't take even tiny risks; you can't wait and see if your country will be in history books as an experiment that lasted 250 years. By declining to help the US military, Google engineers take that risk to a degree. But if they participate then they gain enormous leverage: Given the stakes, the US military can't afford to alienate them. I'd hope they can use their leverage to achieve related goals: Agreements banning the use of this technology against civilians, foreign or domestic, and banning sharing the tech with law enforcement. Leverage Congress into passing privacy and civil rights laws protecting Americans against abuses of the technology. [0] Note that AI changes things in another way: For all human history, military power was tied to population size. In the future, with the right AI and some underground robot factories, potentially a small country could dominate. Maybe Singapore?
- dmitrygr 9y agoIn the modern day, the difference between civilian and terrorist is so blurred (not only in factually but also in time - fon't forget, USA's founding fathers were terrorists, if you asked the UK monarchy) even humans often cannot tell. Do we trust AIs to?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago> don't forget, USA's founding fathers were terrorists, This gets repeated all the time, but that doesn't make it true. When did the founding fathers deliberately do mass killings of civilians? They basically won by fighting pitched battles with the British. They had diplomatic relations with several countries (Denmark and France being the major ones). There was a command structure with clear lines of authority (Continental Congress -> George Washington -> other commanders). In addition, there was at least an attempt made to follow international laws. They were rebels, yes. However, it was more a coalition of existing colonial governments (especially the elected legislatures) deciding to part ways with the British. By and large, the terrorists of our times are not at all like that. They are not part of a legitimate civilian government fighting an enemy using a formal military organization.
- dogecoinbase 9y agoContinuing to have worked for Google (as a software engineer, with other options) after 2018 will become like having worked for Uber through 2017 -- an indelible black mark on your resume.
- meri_dian 9y agoAs a US citizen concerned with our bloated military budget but who also wants the US to remain the strongest military nation on Earth, I'd like to cut $100 billion from the $600 billion plus yearly US military budget, and allocate that money to infrastructure and social programs. We would still have by far the largest military budget in the world after this. Whoever knows about the US military budget, how feasible would this be? What is the bulk of the military budget dedicated to?
- killjoywashere 9y agoThe biggest fractions are personnel, operations, and health care (last I checked, the Defense Health Agency spends more than the Marine Corps ... and provides health care for 8.4 million Americans. The ones who are that strongest military). But the DoD budget actually pales in comparison to Medicare and Social Security. The US Government is a well-armed insurance company, not a weapons dealer selling health insurance.
- dschuler 9y agoYou could cut a number of non-essential items, even if they're not the largest - the US Army is the largest employer of musicians in the country [0], and the entire military spent at least $437M in one year on musicians in 2015 [1]. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2010/09/29/130212353/military-marching-bands https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2010/09/29/130212353/... [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/pentagons-bands-battle-223435 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/pentagons-bands-battl...
- 18pfsmt 9y agoThat still leaves $99,563M. I'm not familiar enough with the details of the defense budget, but when looking at budgets, in general, the focus should be on line items that move the needle significantly.
- dschuler 9y agoI guess the point I was trying to make is that there is plenty of room for budget trimming - you could go straight to the budget for fighter jets or soldiers or whatever the big ticket items are, but you're going to get a lot more resistance.
- Barrin92 9y agoThis really is something >"Google’s Eric Schmidt summed up the tech industry’s concerns about collaborating with the Pentagon at a talk last fall. “There’s a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly,” I sure am surprised that the discussion has already reached the point where tech companies are debating whether they kill people 'incorrectly'. I must have missed the democratic discussion about private businesses assisting in killing people at all, a duty traditionally exercised by states.
- 18pfsmt 9y agoWhen people refer to the military industrial complex, they are referring to the businesses like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc. that are the private companies involved in designing and building weapons.
- kridsdale1 9y agoExactly. Those companies are civilian as google is. Lockheed is next door even! Google is part of the intelligence wing of the MIC. The only controversy is that some of the more Berkeley / Burning Man googlers are surprised to learn that.
- creaghpatr 9y agoActually a lot (or at least a not insignificant amount) of MICs are burners according to the book Stealing Fire
- gmueckl 9y agoAlso, private companies are contracted for military services. Remember Blackwater?
- noelsusman 9y agoWhen did private businesses ever not assist the state in killing people?
- bhhaskin 9y agoI am surprised that this is news. Google has done US government work for a long time. After 9/11 the newly formed homeland security wanted pictures and accurate data in regards to residential addresses in the US. At first they went to the credit bureaus and data brokers to collect and store this information due to the fact they already had researchers on the ground collecting data. Google came along with Google earth and not long after that Google street view. Think about how long it was before they where able to actually monetize google earth & maps. They perfected the art of geodata collection and was likely paid for via government grants [0] and contracts. Even today they sell access to different government agencies[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#History [1] https://enterprise.google.com/maps/government/ https://enterprise.google.com/maps/government/
- 18pfsmt 9y agoGoogle Maps was basically pieced together from smaller companies they acquired. From Wikipedia: Google Earth was originally developed by Keyhole, Inc., a Mountain View-based company founded in 2001. Keyhole, after being spun off from Intrinsic Graphics, received funding from the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, in addition to smaller capital from Nvidia and Sony.
- bhhaskin 9y agoYou are right. Google maps & earth where bought at the same time and share most of their data.
- schoen 9y agoI believe that Keyhole itself was named after a spy satellite series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Hole (But I don't know whether there was any other connection between the company and NRO.)
- sterlind 9y agoIC-funded startups are often founded by ex-IC people. "Keyhole" was the logical name to choose, since In-Q-Tel is more than familiar with the real deal. it makes the VC pitch much clearer to .gov backers.
- davesque 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil Update: Will someone please explain to me why I've been flagged? If this story isn't the most blatant contradiction of their supposed motto, I don't know what is. I feel I'm entirely within my rights as a participant in this community to point that out. Why should I not be allowed to express dissent in reaction to a story like this? Outrageous. Absolutely f--king outrageous.
- sctb 9y agoThe issue is that the guidelines ask us to comment civilly and substantively. Drive-by link dropping is not substantive, so if there's something you want to express please write it out. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- davesque 9y agoAlright, then let me spell it out for you: aiding in the development of A.I. enabled drones is evil. This is the slipperiest slope I can imagine and they're already taking the first steps. Where does this all end? We have Facebook and Twitter allowing propagandists to run amok on their platforms. Now, we have Google "analyzing" drone footage for the government. Where does the supposedly virtuous and righteous tech world draw the f--king line?
- z3t4 9y agoGoogle's new cloud offering "flower express" you just type someones personal id, and then the Google database looks up last known position and sends a drone.
- dna_polymerase 9y agoSo when Damore released his manifesto a lot of people wanted Google to fire him, otherwise they would quit themselves. Where is the Google employee outrage now? I mean, this right here is bad, it has serious implications. Drone killings are the most outrageous thing the U.S. has done in a while...
- aforty 9y agoWhat happened to "do no evil"?
- cityofghosts 9y agoIt worked for the UK and the British East India company , it should work fine for America. Tesla can set up mining camps on Mars and eliminate ten percent of it's "underperforming" population every year, just like it does at it's factory.
- greglindahl 9y agoSource? The article I remember about Tesla layoffs said it was a lot less than 10%, and mostly not factory workers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- booleandilemma 9y agoThere is a history of large companies helping the US government, and they’re not all defense contractors. Why are they surprised? Google is the Bell Labs of our time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S._federal_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S...
- IntronExon 9y agoThe word used is “outraged” and not “surprised” though. I think that’s more than just a semantic point. In fact there is no mention of surprise in the article. I think that’s a reasonable reaction, whereas surprise is a straw man, largely implying a naïveté which is notably absent in the article.
- abraae 9y agoWe faced this at work recently (at our decidely sub-Google scale) when sales guy refused to bid for an opportunity at a weapons manufacturer so we had some interesting discussions around the issue. Its a little hard to make blanket statements that weapons/warfare are bad. There are good times to use weapons. An obvious one was at the time of WWII. If the clever people had refused to work on weapons, things would have finished up potentially a lot worse for mankind generally. And perhaps in our medium term future, as climate change becomes more and more real, a critical mass of people will decry the continued burning of fossil fuels. And if retrograde nations continue to poison our common resource, then maybe some global police force will need weapons to stop them.
- EggsOnToast 9y agoThere's also an argument to be made that remaining on the cutting edge of military science is a form of national security. Being one of the first, or only, nations to develop and test a new kind of weapon means that you'll also be among the first nations to be able to fully assess its practical viability and evaluate its countermeasures.
- IntronExon 9y agoHow many thermonuclear weapons do we need to be secure? Secure from what? Invasion? No one is invading a nuclear power.
- EggsOnToast 9y agoI'm not sure I see the relevance of your question since what you're asking for is a necessary quantity not a necessary level of innovation. There could be lots of reasons to develop a better thermonuclear weapon even if it's never put into use. Innovation in that area would help us to gauge the difficulty of miniaturizing such a device and, if it turns out to be difficult but possible, whether or not modern technology makes such a feat possible for a hostile non-nation group such as a terrorist organization. In the situation being discussed in the article, the argument would be that remaining on the cutting edge of drone technology allows us to evaluate the threat that drones could pose to our navy if a situation like the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis ever happened again.
- bingobob 9y agoare they working with them as in building the system or are they just helping them with understanding the technology like TensorFlow APIs.
- ehsankia 9y agoIt sounds to me more like lending their already existing Cloud AI for analysing video. This stuff already exists to some extent and can be used by anyone (within Google's terms & services). https://cloud.google.com/video-intelligence/ https://cloud.google.com/video-intelligence/
- majestik 9y agoI predict the US government will start taking Net Neutrality seriously in the next few months. “You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”
- nwrk 9y agoSo next time resolving Google Captcha images -> increasing accuracy of US army drones ? Same apply to my Google Photos ?
- Kenji 9y ago"Don't be evil" hm?
- alottafunchata 9y agoGood! Thank you Google.
- announcerman 9y agoAs long as there's two people left on the planet someone's going to want someone dead. Defense contracts will always be a good investment and it can let you get close to people in power more easily than by lobbying, no wonder Google is taking the opportunity.