36 ms·

This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, an

This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research shouldn't be viewed as a necessarily bad thing. Many other major powers have heavily invested in AI across all fronts (including military applications), and it would be stupid for the US to not have one of its' largest strategic assets to not be part of the process.

sigi45 9y ago
It still is. It is not necessary for world peace to help the Pentagon to build better killing machines.
- airstrike 9y ago
  Citation needed
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Sure, I'll bite. Just falsify it: the Pentagon's killing machines have never brought about world peace, and world peace has never occurred while the Pentagon received killing machines.
    - airstrike 9y ago
      You say that as if “world peace” was an attainable goal in any realistic timeframe. War doesn’t exist because people “hate peace”.
      - rhizome 9y ago
        I didn't bring world peace into the thread, but at any rate there's also the saying that "All war represents a failure of diplomacy," which I tend to agree with. I also think "are indifferent toward" should replace "hate" there.
    - BookmarkSaver 9y ago
      You are blatantly embedding a false premise here; that the goal is or should be world peace. That is an absolutely inane stance to take. How about instead of the obviously unattainable and unrealistic goal of "world peace", we just go for "more peace", or "less violent death" or similar goals. It is very hard to argue that American hegemony has not significantly reduced conflicts around the world. Not all of them, not equitably, and generally in pursuit of economic rather than ideological interests, but there is basically nothing to be gained by opening up the US to actually being threatened by competing powers.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Unless you're the one getting shot
- walshemj 9y ago
  You'd rather they had "worse" killing machines
- Const-me 9y ago
  Pentagon and their killing machines is the #1 reason why there’s now peace here in Balkans, for 18 years and counting. I don’t think people of ex-Yugoslavia would stop killing each other without being forced to.
  - sigi45 9y ago
    'build better killing machines'. They are able to kill people well enough already.
galieos_ghost 9y ago
Idealists on the left would apparently prefer China getting a complete monopoly on military AI and expanding their dictatorship globally instead of being pragmatic. Reminder, if you work in tech you are collecting blood money because everything we use was initially funded by the military for military application. If you are going to attack Google for this and don't leave the industry you are a hypocrite
tclancy 9y ago
>the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography For the purposes of being better at waging war. I am not disagreeing with your statement, but I think leaving out the reason why is treating the military like it's "NASA with a few guns laying around" and implying that one can work on weapons systems without having any moral culpability for how they are used.
swarnie_ 9y ago
Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. I think DoD/Pentagon put up the funding for what later became Google maps. Not to mention the GPS constellation we all enjoy using. Its a shame progress has to be made through these channels but it has proved very effective in the past.
- mtgx 9y ago
  > Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. That's an excuse people without any morals often use. It's up to each one of us to do the right thing. After all: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing” - or I would add that evil also rises when "good men" actually do the evil thing "because otherwise the bad men would do it anyway." Google likely has the most advanced AI tech in the world right now. That means if that they allow the US government to use it, they will be directly responsible for accelerating the progress of autonomous killer robots or making them real in the first place. After all, I don't see too many other companies with AI that can learn the Go game within days and beat world champions.
- icebraining 9y ago
  If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. The obvious reply is: great, then we're not needed, let someone else do it!
  - machiaweliczny 9y ago
    This way you end up with someone unskilled taking a job and instead of 1 drone you have to send 10 because only 1 will hit the target.
    - fwip 9y ago
      If our war machine kills less people, sounds like a win to me.
      - hota_mazi 9y ago
danesparza 9y ago
My memory isn't short. You made a point of talking about cryptography. The US government also classified crypto as munitions in order to control its usage and export: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... This had very negative effects on cryptography in general (see the FREAK exploit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK ) Also, why wouldn't this be employed to better monitor Stingray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker) systems? I don't think the government (and specifically, the military) should be viewed as a non-partisan actor when it comes to technology.
- wolco 9y ago
  They have an agenda that is clear but it doesn't mean they should be shutout because the investment they make can help push new ideas forward.
  - smokeyj 9y ago
    We should embrace the development of a surveillance state because it could spin-off some cool tech? Hmmm.
    - wolco 9y ago
      It worked when they created the internet. The original purpose was not what the internet became.
  - totalZero 9y ago
    Alternatively, there is an abundance of private sources of funding. One of the founding principles of American government was the freedom from state surveillance and intrusion into private homes. Nowadays, the federal government of the USA can legally use any technology that is patented, so why should they be allowed to restrict inventors from disclosing or selling IP that inhibits surveillance?
- jbob2000 9y ago
zython 9y ago
there is no inherent reason that these technologies need to be developed by the military, they could just as well be developed for civilian use when given the funding. also it is not surprising that these things are invented by the dod when you're spending ~600-700 bilion a year on warfare and intelligence operations. That last sentence of yours rubs me kinda the wrong way; that is a dangerious premise that could set us back ~30 years when the cold war and the arms race was well and alive, but this time we'd have robots and AI
- galieos_ghost 9y ago
  China is currently heavily funding genetically engineering geniuses and AI. The US can either wake up or sit around and wait to be subjugated via an autonomous drone swarm developed by 250IQ Chinese scientists
  - GordonS 9y ago
    I... hope this is sarcasm?
vasco 9y ago
One thing is acknowledging that if you pour lots of money into getting better at anything (space exploration, waging war, etc) you'll get cool technological advances applicable in other areas. Another thing is to specifically choose to dedicate resources to one of those areas instead of another area. Why can't google bid on AI projects for better detection of geological landmarks in other planets? (which I'm guessing is a similar endeavor to what the article mentions - and already has ongoing research)
komali2 9y ago
I hear you, and I want to make a "times change" argument. This is my perspective, because I read too much scifi: I can conceive of a couple possibilities in 300 years. 1. Humanity is gone or stone-aged. Either because it failed to colonize before being wiped out by disease, because it nuked itself, or because it implemented AI in a way that got itself killed. 2. Humanity has turned peaceful, formed a global community (if not wholly, then at least nearly so regarding scientific resources), and colonized. I draw such a sharp line because I don't see how the resources to colonize can be mustered without justifying it with an arms race unless peaceful cooperation is established. Without this, I think somebody is going to put a nuke in orbit around Mars and call themselves King/Queen of the inner solar system. Therefore, I think we should be working towards the cultural changes that I believe necessary immediately. This is why I'm a staunch proponent of universal education, universal healthcare, gun control, etc. I think there's no better time than the present to "be in the race together" globally than now. Given climate change, death of bees, super-bacterias, and narcissists with penis-size complexes holding fingers over red buttons, I see a ticking clock. Avoid (1) by tackling culture, is my theory, and I think that's what these googler employees are here. (I post this very much looking forward to being challenged on all points)
- mkirklions 9y ago
  I worry that culture doesnt help at the top of leadership. Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you. Dictators dont care if war is unpopular as long as its beneficial. I think nukes may be obsolete because war is no longer beneficial, but leadership of a company may be 100% set on finding AI by any means necessary.
  - komali2 9y ago
    Can you clarify your second line, "Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you." Are you saying that everyone has to do what you say because you pay them? If so, I don't think that point applies to this situation - we're talking Google engineers, they shouldn't be hard pressed to pick up their things and find a job elsewhere that aligns better with their values.
niccccccccc 9y ago
Exactly. China just turned dictatorship, and has already installed AI facial recognition and soon voice recognition software for its police. This could allow China to better manage its Uighyr concentration camps and kidnap freedom fighters in Hong Kong. Along with its ambition to have everything 'Made in China' in 2025, and invade Taiwan, China is looking like a AI enhanced Hitler Germany 2.0. We need weapons to fight an enemy like this, with help from US technology companies.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I am OK with weapons development. What I don't like is that these weapons get turned into big business selling them to unstable regions and in the case of the NSA the technology gets used against its own citizens.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  This depiction of China is blown way out of proportion and it's basically thanks to US propaganda which is used to justify the kinds of military spending and activities it undertakes.
2_listerine_pls 9y ago
You are saying that military R&D is important no matter what they are involved in. This incredibly stupid reasoning can be used to justify the development viruses that can erradicate the human species. > DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research shouldn't be viewed as a necessarily bad thing. Let's be spesific: they are using current AI algorithms to track everyone's movements from airborn imagery. It will be used to kill people in drone strikes and for population control.
- brandonmenc 9y ago
  I'll take this over massive world wars. I'd rather have neither, but I'm realistic.
  - GordonS 9y ago
    I hardly think that this kind of technology will be useful in stopping a world war.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      A guided tallboy on Hitler's bunker would have
- walshemj 9y ago
  As opposed to using dumb bombs which are far more likely to have collateral damage.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
The funding come from the DoD because any other appropriate entity is financially starved because the DoD gets so much money. The latest budget provides them: $700,000,000,000 Or as Obama said in the 2016 State of the Union: "We spend more on defense than the next 8 nations COMBINED." Keep in mind, most of that 8 are allies. I struggle to see why we should be praising a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- friedman23 9y ago
  Just imagine if we stopped spending on defense in the 80s when the cold war ended and we had to deal with today's Russia with decades old technology
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    I think we would be fine with a smaller military. Nobody is talking about completely stopping military expenditures. The question is whether it really needs to be as big as it is right now.
    - chimen 9y ago
      Overturning so many regimes in petrol filled countries is a messy business. I think a big chunk of the spending goes to intelligence and misinformation.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        Personally I think a big chunk goes to not well thought out missions like Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. It seems nobody is willing to admit that there is no path to winning or ending things so they just keep going and spending a lot of money and energy. And the defense contractors are certainly happy with this.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Or how about having to deal with the rapidly ascendant Chinese military that is annexing vast territory in Asia right now? There's nothing they respect except for strength, they're not even subtle about that fact. Or if the US hadn't spent over a trillion dollars defending South Korea from the China, USSR, North Korea axis across decades. South Korea would not exist as we know it today. It'd more likely look like North Korea. There's an exceptionally strong argument for the US working with regional military allies in Europe and Asia on defense and having a very powerful military to match its $20 trillion economy. Should the spending be more like $450 billion or $730 billion - that's the primary debate.
jacquesm 9y ago
Arguments from utility do not form a solid basis to argue about morality.
rb808 9y ago
Steve Blank talks a lot about this history of Silicon Valley and how most of the original technology scene was started by DoD projects. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
jadedhacker 9y ago
Military funding is used as a slight of hand. The legislature scares the public, the public hands over money, and then the military is used to invest the money in long term goals to build a future technological society that the private sector is wholly unwilling to do because of short term profit focus. This also has the benefit of getting war averse liberals to say nice things about the large standing army and bloody foreign interventions of the US empire, most of which have failed to produce anything other than blowback and civil war across the globe. https://archive.org/details/NoamChomsky-ScienceMilitaryFundingAtMit-2015 https://archive.org/details/NoamChomsky-ScienceMilitaryFundi...
benkarst 9y ago
What's theoretical about drone strikes?
vkou 9y ago
The military also funded advances in airplanes, trucks, and medicine, but that doesn't mean that doctors should have no qualms about working on biological weapons. Also, many people, including myself, consider drone strikes to be state-sponsored terrorism. Just because some part of the military may be justifiable, does not mean all of it is.
titzer 9y ago
Well the project "uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes." That's a direct application of tech to killing people, not some abstract network or compiler tech. There's a big difference.
- hulahoof 9y ago
  The flip side is better targeting should result in less collateral deaths
IAmEveryone 9y ago
It's perfectly possible to remember every technological invention the military has ever been involved in and still object to participation in military research. Possible reasons, using Wernher von Braun's rocket development as an example: - He, or somebody else, would have invented rockets anyway at some point - That 'some point' would have been much earlier if the money spent on military (research & some of the rest) would instead have been put into rockets in the first place - even if the two mechanisms abovc were not true: I'd probably be willing to forgo the benefits of the space age if it meant undoing WW2 and the Holocaust - In most ethical frameworks except utilitarianism, it's strongly discourage to accept some evil for some perceived greater good. Meaning: Even if rockets have saved far more lives than WW2 vanquished, participating in the project is morally dubious at best Specifically to Google's project: - This seems to actually invert the usual idea of the military funding basic research that later gets adapted for civilian use. They are building on the fundamental research into AI already done by Google and others, and using it very specifically to kill people. Any advances useful for other purposes would seem to be even more coincidental than usual. - While "minimising collateral damage" i. e. civilian casualties may seem to be a worthy cause, it cannot be ignored that such advances are likely to result in greater use of the technology. Drones are actually the best example of this effect. Just look at the Obama administration's willingness to expand the use of drone strikes, which was a direct result of the technology appearing to be the lesser evil compared to manned missions on the ground.
Asdfbla 9y ago
While that may be the reality of things, it surely can't be a justification in any way. If anything, I'd be afraid to revert back to those dark times where technological advancements were driven mainly by military needs.
- jimmy1 9y ago
  Can you elaborate more on why you consider those to be "dark" times?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
have you watched "Good Kill" or maybe even are familiar with the work of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung's research on US military drone program at Ramstein airbase? I guess not, because what you're proposing are further crimes against humanity. If the US wants AI/autonomous weapons then they should agree to have their troops held accountable at the The Hague International Court of Justice. - The Global Assassination Grid: The Infrastructure and People behind Drone Killings: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8425-the_global_assassination_grid https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8425-the_global_assassination_gr... - The Drone Papers: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ - Graphs, Drones & Phones: The role of social-graphs for Drones in the War on Terror: https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones
- mantas 9y ago
  > If the US wants AI/autonomous weapons then they should agree to have their troops held accountable at the The Hague International Court of Justice. Why would US agree to that if Russia or China couldn't care less about it? That'd be just handicapping the military.
  - DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
    because it'd be less hypocritical when playing "world-police"
    - mantas 9y ago
      But that'd cripple the world-police and China or Russia would have much more leverage.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mempko 9y ago
People also seem to forget that the Google self driving car was initially developed by the team that one the DARPA challenge. Government, especially the military have been funding all the risky tech that Google profits from. Even google itself was funded by a government grant. Google's logo has been on the side of rockets launching spy satellites for years. Google Maps was originally a government contractor. Google the company knows who butters their bread. What the google employees need to do is push for a civilian government research and science funding effort, like ARPA was back in the day. Unfortunately that sort of funding is politically dead, while military funding is always in style.
SilasX 9y ago
Or maybe they remember it perfectly, but don't consider it a valid argument to say, "X supported something you like 40 years ago, therefore X is beyond reproach"?
utopcell 9y ago
I strongly disagree with this comparison. In the prior, successful cases, the military funded research which was open, while in this case, the direction of information is reversed and the outcome is secret.
afsina 9y ago
Broken glass fallacy. Just because government and military funded some technology does not mean that technology would not be in an advanced state otherwise. Especially if you consider the countless failures and unnecessary excessive spending that took the resources indirectly from people and inventors. Besides brains that worked for military and government funded projects would perhaps find much better things to work on otherwise.
dotancohen 9y ago
> This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, [...] And what do we have to show for it? Wikipedia is great and Youtube is entertaining, but the rest of the internet is horrible. I say that as a software developer. Due to the wonderful internet our children now have attention spans far below the time a typical class lesson takes. The smartest brains on Earth are not building spaceships or curing disease, but rather implementing systems to get you to click on ads. Our bodies and habits are being tracked, our opinions manipulated, and our privacy is being handed of willingfully for a chat and photo-sharing platform. Military tech _often_ has implications far beyond what the original scientists and engineers intended. Sometimes for the best. But as you allude AI to the internet, don't forget how much damage the internet is doing to us even as we enjoy it and profit from it.
Myrmornis 9y ago
What makes you think the signatories of the google letter have forgotten that?
heavyheavy 9y ago
The military was also responsible for the miserable state of nuclear power in the United States.
musage 9y ago
> Many other major powers have heavily invested in AI across all fronts (including military applications), and it would be stupid for the US to not have one of its' largest strategic assets to not be part of the process. I'd say it's stupid for people to fuel those "powers" that use real, threatened or imagined conflict with each other to exploit and control mostly them. http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/fromm_erich_t.html http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/from... > WALLACE: Of course, our, our main concern as human beings, certainly in this part of the world, is to survive, and to stay free, and to realize ourselves. How does all that you've said affect our ability to survive, and to stay free, in this world that is now in crisis? > FROMM: Well, I think you touch upon a very important point here: namely, we must make a decision of values...If our supreme value is the development of the Western tradition - of a man for whom the highest thing in life is man, for whom love for man, respect for man, and the dignity of man, are supreme values - then we cannot ask the question that says, "if it is better for our survival, might we drop these values?" If these are supreme values, then they are there, and whether we live or we die, we shall not change these values. But if we begin to say, "Well, maybe we can cope better with the Russians if we also transform ourselves into a managed society......if we, as somebody put it the other day, train our soldiers to be like the Turks, who have fought so bravely in Korea...if we are willing to change our whole way of life for the sake of so-called "survival," then I think we do exactly that which threatens our survival. Because our vitality, and the vitality of each nation, rests on the sincerity and depth of the faith in the ideas which it announces, or pronounces. I think our danger is that we talk one thing, and we feel and act another thing. Generally, whenever I hear people talk about inevitability, while ignoring how much of our world "is" because of the things we repeatedly decide to do, I have to think of Richard Stallman: > Somebody is saying this is inevitable - and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true. As for China and how we must not allow a mineshaft gap, there's this Chinese proverb: > He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount. If you don't have corpses in your basement, there's a lot of people scared shitless of you, and they'd love nothing more than for you to get onboard. Don't get onboard.
campground 9y ago
This idea of justifying military buildup by it's beneficial trickle down into civilian technology always struck me as very odd. It seems like an absurdly inefficient and roundabout way of funding R&D. If the government wants to invest in research they should just invest in research.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Whilst agreeing in part, the history of martially-motivated technical development through all of human history is remarkable. I'd argue it's been a vastly greater influence than so-called market motivations. As an evolutionary selective pressure, war and military necessity are unparalleled. Re-reading Samuel B. Griffith's translation of The Art of War, I noticed that he mentions, in 1963, Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, which had only begun delivering volumes (the work remains in progress). That would include not only metalurgy, but entire volumes devoted to both martial and marine technologies.
zpatel 9y ago
yes but the weapon systems may be sold or transferred to some countries like Israel/Saudi Arabia eventually.. how would you view their use on protesters or civilians by them or would their be international laws that would prevent such use ?
samirillian 9y ago
As Carl Jung might say, just because a thing has base origins, it doesn't mean that it has to be a base thing. Google should not shrug and say "from violence we came to violence we will return." I'm moved by the people speaking out, as much as I am disappointed to hear of Mr. Schmidt's involvement with the Pentagon.
strainer 9y ago
They cost a great deal of R&D budget for their role in the development IT technology, and the larger part of development came from non military research, from academia and companies like Bell Labs. The Google workers urging their CEO to pull out of Pentagon projects are the ones who do not have such short memories as to be distracted from the blatant deceptions and disasters carried out in recent history, with no sign of relenting.

sigi45 9y ago

It still is. It is not necessary for world peace to help the Pentagon to build better killing machines.

airstrike 9y ago
Citation needed
- rhizome 9y ago
  Sure, I'll bite. Just falsify it: the Pentagon's killing machines have never brought about world peace, and world peace has never occurred while the Pentagon received killing machines.
  - airstrike 9y ago
    You say that as if “world peace” was an attainable goal in any realistic timeframe. War doesn’t exist because people “hate peace”.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      I didn't bring world peace into the thread, but at any rate there's also the saying that "All war represents a failure of diplomacy," which I tend to agree with. I also think "are indifferent toward" should replace "hate" there.
  - BookmarkSaver 9y ago
    You are blatantly embedding a false premise here; that the goal is or should be world peace. That is an absolutely inane stance to take. How about instead of the obviously unattainable and unrealistic goal of "world peace", we just go for "more peace", or "less violent death" or similar goals. It is very hard to argue that American hegemony has not significantly reduced conflicts around the world. Not all of them, not equitably, and generally in pursuit of economic rather than ideological interests, but there is basically nothing to be gained by opening up the US to actually being threatened by competing powers.
raverbashing 9y ago
Unless you're the one getting shot
walshemj 9y ago
You'd rather they had "worse" killing machines
Const-me 9y ago
Pentagon and their killing machines is the #1 reason why there’s now peace here in Balkans, for 18 years and counting. I don’t think people of ex-Yugoslavia would stop killing each other without being forced to.
- sigi45 9y ago
  'build better killing machines'. They are able to kill people well enough already.

galieos_ghost 9y ago

Idealists on the left would apparently prefer China getting a complete monopoly on military AI and expanding their dictatorship globally instead of being pragmatic. Reminder, if you work in tech you are collecting blood money because everything we use was initially funded by the military for military application. If you are going to attack Google for this and don't leave the industry you are a hypocrite

tclancy 9y ago

>the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography For the purposes of being better at waging war. I am not disagreeing with your statement, but I think leaving out the reason why is treating the military like it's "NASA with a few guns laying around" and implying that one can work on weapons systems without having any moral culpability for how they are used.

swarnie_ 9y ago

Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. I think DoD/Pentagon put up the funding for what later became Google maps. Not to mention the GPS constellation we all enjoy using. Its a shame progress has to be made through these channels but it has proved very effective in the past.

mtgx 9y ago
> Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. That's an excuse people without any morals often use. It's up to each one of us to do the right thing. After all: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing” - or I would add that evil also rises when "good men" actually do the evil thing "because otherwise the bad men would do it anyway." Google likely has the most advanced AI tech in the world right now. That means if that they allow the US government to use it, they will be directly responsible for accelerating the progress of autonomous killer robots or making them real in the first place. After all, I don't see too many other companies with AI that can learn the Go game within days and beat world champions.
icebraining 9y ago
If it isn't Google it'll be someone else. The obvious reply is: great, then we're not needed, let someone else do it!
- machiaweliczny 9y ago
  This way you end up with someone unskilled taking a job and instead of 1 drone you have to send 10 because only 1 will hit the target.
  - fwip 9y ago
    If our war machine kills less people, sounds like a win to me.
    - hota_mazi 9y ago

danesparza 9y ago

My memory isn't short. You made a point of talking about cryptography. The US government also classified crypto as munitions in order to control its usage and export: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... This had very negative effects on cryptography in general (see the FREAK exploit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK ) Also, why wouldn't this be employed to better monitor Stingray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker) systems? I don't think the government (and specifically, the military) should be viewed as a non-partisan actor when it comes to technology.

wolco 9y ago
They have an agenda that is clear but it doesn't mean they should be shutout because the investment they make can help push new ideas forward.
- smokeyj 9y ago
  We should embrace the development of a surveillance state because it could spin-off some cool tech? Hmmm.
  - wolco 9y ago
    It worked when they created the internet. The original purpose was not what the internet became.
- totalZero 9y ago
  Alternatively, there is an abundance of private sources of funding. One of the founding principles of American government was the freedom from state surveillance and intrusion into private homes. Nowadays, the federal government of the USA can legally use any technology that is patented, so why should they be allowed to restrict inventors from disclosing or selling IP that inhibits surveillance?
jbob2000 9y ago

zython 9y ago

there is no inherent reason that these technologies need to be developed by the military, they could just as well be developed for civilian use when given the funding. also it is not surprising that these things are invented by the dod when you're spending ~600-700 bilion a year on warfare and intelligence operations. That last sentence of yours rubs me kinda the wrong way; that is a dangerious premise that could set us back ~30 years when the cold war and the arms race was well and alive, but this time we'd have robots and AI

galieos_ghost 9y ago
China is currently heavily funding genetically engineering geniuses and AI. The US can either wake up or sit around and wait to be subjugated via an autonomous drone swarm developed by 250IQ Chinese scientists
- GordonS 9y ago
  I... hope this is sarcasm?

vasco 9y ago

One thing is acknowledging that if you pour lots of money into getting better at anything (space exploration, waging war, etc) you'll get cool technological advances applicable in other areas. Another thing is to specifically choose to dedicate resources to one of those areas instead of another area. Why can't google bid on AI projects for better detection of geological landmarks in other planets? (which I'm guessing is a similar endeavor to what the article mentions - and already has ongoing research)

komali2 9y ago

I hear you, and I want to make a "times change" argument. This is my perspective, because I read too much scifi: I can conceive of a couple possibilities in 300 years. 1. Humanity is gone or stone-aged. Either because it failed to colonize before being wiped out by disease, because it nuked itself, or because it implemented AI in a way that got itself killed. 2. Humanity has turned peaceful, formed a global community (if not wholly, then at least nearly so regarding scientific resources), and colonized. I draw such a sharp line because I don't see how the resources to colonize can be mustered without justifying it with an arms race unless peaceful cooperation is established. Without this, I think somebody is going to put a nuke in orbit around Mars and call themselves King/Queen of the inner solar system. Therefore, I think we should be working towards the cultural changes that I believe necessary immediately. This is why I'm a staunch proponent of universal education, universal healthcare, gun control, etc. I think there's no better time than the present to "be in the race together" globally than now. Given climate change, death of bees, super-bacterias, and narcissists with penis-size complexes holding fingers over red buttons, I see a ticking clock. Avoid (1) by tackling culture, is my theory, and I think that's what these googler employees are here. (I post this very much looking forward to being challenged on all points)

mkirklions 9y ago
I worry that culture doesnt help at the top of leadership. Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you. Dictators dont care if war is unpopular as long as its beneficial. I think nukes may be obsolete because war is no longer beneficial, but leadership of a company may be 100% set on finding AI by any means necessary.
- komali2 9y ago
  Can you clarify your second line, "Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you." Are you saying that everyone has to do what you say because you pay them? If so, I don't think that point applies to this situation - we're talking Google engineers, they shouldn't be hard pressed to pick up their things and find a job elsewhere that aligns better with their values.

niccccccccc 9y ago

Exactly. China just turned dictatorship, and has already installed AI facial recognition and soon voice recognition software for its police. This could allow China to better manage its Uighyr concentration camps and kidnap freedom fighters in Hong Kong. Along with its ambition to have everything 'Made in China' in 2025, and invade Taiwan, China is looking like a AI enhanced Hitler Germany 2.0. We need weapons to fight an enemy like this, with help from US technology companies.

maxxxxx 9y ago
I am OK with weapons development. What I don't like is that these weapons get turned into big business selling them to unstable regions and in the case of the NSA the technology gets used against its own citizens.
kiliantics 9y ago
This depiction of China is blown way out of proportion and it's basically thanks to US propaganda which is used to justify the kinds of military spending and activities it undertakes.

2_listerine_pls 9y ago

You are saying that military R&D is important no matter what they are involved in. This incredibly stupid reasoning can be used to justify the development viruses that can erradicate the human species. > DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research shouldn't be viewed as a necessarily bad thing. Let's be spesific: they are using current AI algorithms to track everyone's movements from airborn imagery. It will be used to kill people in drone strikes and for population control.

brandonmenc 9y ago
I'll take this over massive world wars. I'd rather have neither, but I'm realistic.
- GordonS 9y ago
  I hardly think that this kind of technology will be useful in stopping a world war.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    A guided tallboy on Hitler's bunker would have
walshemj 9y ago
As opposed to using dumb bombs which are far more likely to have collateral damage.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

The funding come from the DoD because any other appropriate entity is financially starved because the DoD gets so much money. The latest budget provides them: $700,000,000,000 Or as Obama said in the 2016 State of the Union: "We spend more on defense than the next 8 nations COMBINED." Keep in mind, most of that 8 are allies. I struggle to see why we should be praising a self-fulfilling prophecy.

friedman23 9y ago
Just imagine if we stopped spending on defense in the 80s when the cold war ended and we had to deal with today's Russia with decades old technology
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I think we would be fine with a smaller military. Nobody is talking about completely stopping military expenditures. The question is whether it really needs to be as big as it is right now.
  - chimen 9y ago
    Overturning so many regimes in petrol filled countries is a messy business. I think a big chunk of the spending goes to intelligence and misinformation.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Personally I think a big chunk goes to not well thought out missions like Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. It seems nobody is willing to admit that there is no path to winning or ending things so they just keep going and spending a lot of money and energy. And the defense contractors are certainly happy with this.
- adventured 9y ago
  Or how about having to deal with the rapidly ascendant Chinese military that is annexing vast territory in Asia right now? There's nothing they respect except for strength, they're not even subtle about that fact. Or if the US hadn't spent over a trillion dollars defending South Korea from the China, USSR, North Korea axis across decades. South Korea would not exist as we know it today. It'd more likely look like North Korea. There's an exceptionally strong argument for the US working with regional military allies in Europe and Asia on defense and having a very powerful military to match its $20 trillion economy. Should the spending be more like $450 billion or $730 billion - that's the primary debate.

jacquesm 9y ago

Arguments from utility do not form a solid basis to argue about morality.

rb808 9y ago

Steve Blank talks a lot about this history of Silicon Valley and how most of the original technology scene was started by DoD projects. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

jadedhacker 9y ago

Military funding is used as a slight of hand. The legislature scares the public, the public hands over money, and then the military is used to invest the money in long term goals to build a future technological society that the private sector is wholly unwilling to do because of short term profit focus. This also has the benefit of getting war averse liberals to say nice things about the large standing army and bloody foreign interventions of the US empire, most of which have failed to produce anything other than blowback and civil war across the globe. https://archive.org/details/NoamChomsky-ScienceMilitaryFundingAtMit-2015 https://archive.org/details/NoamChomsky-ScienceMilitaryFundi...

benkarst 9y ago

What's theoretical about drone strikes?

vkou 9y ago

The military also funded advances in airplanes, trucks, and medicine, but that doesn't mean that doctors should have no qualms about working on biological weapons. Also, many people, including myself, consider drone strikes to be state-sponsored terrorism. Just because some part of the military may be justifiable, does not mean all of it is.

titzer 9y ago

Well the project "uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes." That's a direct application of tech to killing people, not some abstract network or compiler tech. There's a big difference.

hulahoof 9y ago
The flip side is better targeting should result in less collateral deaths

IAmEveryone 9y ago

It's perfectly possible to remember every technological invention the military has ever been involved in and still object to participation in military research. Possible reasons, using Wernher von Braun's rocket development as an example: - He, or somebody else, would have invented rockets anyway at some point - That 'some point' would have been much earlier if the money spent on military (research & some of the rest) would instead have been put into rockets in the first place - even if the two mechanisms abovc were not true: I'd probably be willing to forgo the benefits of the space age if it meant undoing WW2 and the Holocaust - In most ethical frameworks except utilitarianism, it's strongly discourage to accept some evil for some perceived greater good. Meaning: Even if rockets have saved far more lives than WW2 vanquished, participating in the project is morally dubious at best Specifically to Google's project: - This seems to actually invert the usual idea of the military funding basic research that later gets adapted for civilian use. They are building on the fundamental research into AI already done by Google and others, and using it very specifically to kill people. Any advances useful for other purposes would seem to be even more coincidental than usual. - While "minimising collateral damage" i. e. civilian casualties may seem to be a worthy cause, it cannot be ignored that such advances are likely to result in greater use of the technology. Drones are actually the best example of this effect. Just look at the Obama administration's willingness to expand the use of drone strikes, which was a direct result of the technology appearing to be the lesser evil compared to manned missions on the ground.

Asdfbla 9y ago

While that may be the reality of things, it surely can't be a justification in any way. If anything, I'd be afraid to revert back to those dark times where technological advancements were driven mainly by military needs.

jimmy1 9y ago
Can you elaborate more on why you consider those to be "dark" times?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

DyslexicAtheist 9y ago

have you watched "Good Kill" or maybe even are familiar with the work of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung's research on US military drone program at Ramstein airbase? I guess not, because what you're proposing are further crimes against humanity. If the US wants AI/autonomous weapons then they should agree to have their troops held accountable at the The Hague International Court of Justice. - The Global Assassination Grid: The Infrastructure and People behind Drone Killings: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8425-the_global_assassination_grid https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8425-the_global_assassination_gr... - The Drone Papers: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ - Graphs, Drones & Phones: The role of social-graphs for Drones in the War on Terror: https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones

mantas 9y ago
> If the US wants AI/autonomous weapons then they should agree to have their troops held accountable at the The Hague International Court of Justice. Why would US agree to that if Russia or China couldn't care less about it? That'd be just handicapping the military.
- DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
  because it'd be less hypocritical when playing "world-police"
  - mantas 9y ago
    But that'd cripple the world-police and China or Russia would have much more leverage.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mempko 9y ago

People also seem to forget that the Google self driving car was initially developed by the team that one the DARPA challenge. Government, especially the military have been funding all the risky tech that Google profits from. Even google itself was funded by a government grant. Google's logo has been on the side of rockets launching spy satellites for years. Google Maps was originally a government contractor. Google the company knows who butters their bread. What the google employees need to do is push for a civilian government research and science funding effort, like ARPA was back in the day. Unfortunately that sort of funding is politically dead, while military funding is always in style.

SilasX 9y ago

Or maybe they remember it perfectly, but don't consider it a valid argument to say, "X supported something you like 40 years ago, therefore X is beyond reproach"?

utopcell 9y ago

I strongly disagree with this comparison. In the prior, successful cases, the military funded research which was open, while in this case, the direction of information is reversed and the outcome is secret.

afsina 9y ago

Broken glass fallacy. Just because government and military funded some technology does not mean that technology would not be in an advanced state otherwise. Especially if you consider the countless failures and unnecessary excessive spending that took the resources indirectly from people and inventors. Besides brains that worked for military and government funded projects would perhaps find much better things to work on otherwise.

dotancohen 9y ago

> This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, [...] And what do we have to show for it? Wikipedia is great and Youtube is entertaining, but the rest of the internet is horrible. I say that as a software developer. Due to the wonderful internet our children now have attention spans far below the time a typical class lesson takes. The smartest brains on Earth are not building spaceships or curing disease, but rather implementing systems to get you to click on ads. Our bodies and habits are being tracked, our opinions manipulated, and our privacy is being handed of willingfully for a chat and photo-sharing platform. Military tech _often_ has implications far beyond what the original scientists and engineers intended. Sometimes for the best. But as you allude AI to the internet, don't forget how much damage the internet is doing to us even as we enjoy it and profit from it.

Myrmornis 9y ago

What makes you think the signatories of the google letter have forgotten that?

heavyheavy 9y ago

The military was also responsible for the miserable state of nuclear power in the United States.

musage 9y ago

> Many other major powers have heavily invested in AI across all fronts (including military applications), and it would be stupid for the US to not have one of its' largest strategic assets to not be part of the process. I'd say it's stupid for people to fuel those "powers" that use real, threatened or imagined conflict with each other to exploit and control mostly them. http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/fromm_erich_t.html http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/from... > WALLACE: Of course, our, our main concern as human beings, certainly in this part of the world, is to survive, and to stay free, and to realize ourselves. How does all that you've said affect our ability to survive, and to stay free, in this world that is now in crisis? > FROMM: Well, I think you touch upon a very important point here: namely, we must make a decision of values...If our supreme value is the development of the Western tradition - of a man for whom the highest thing in life is man, for whom love for man, respect for man, and the dignity of man, are supreme values - then we cannot ask the question that says, "if it is better for our survival, might we drop these values?" If these are supreme values, then they are there, and whether we live or we die, we shall not change these values. But if we begin to say, "Well, maybe we can cope better with the Russians if we also transform ourselves into a managed society......if we, as somebody put it the other day, train our soldiers to be like the Turks, who have fought so bravely in Korea...if we are willing to change our whole way of life for the sake of so-called "survival," then I think we do exactly that which threatens our survival. Because our vitality, and the vitality of each nation, rests on the sincerity and depth of the faith in the ideas which it announces, or pronounces. I think our danger is that we talk one thing, and we feel and act another thing. Generally, whenever I hear people talk about inevitability, while ignoring how much of our world "is" because of the things we repeatedly decide to do, I have to think of Richard Stallman: > Somebody is saying this is inevitable - and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true. As for China and how we must not allow a mineshaft gap, there's this Chinese proverb: > He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount. If you don't have corpses in your basement, there's a lot of people scared shitless of you, and they'd love nothing more than for you to get onboard. Don't get onboard.

campground 9y ago

This idea of justifying military buildup by it's beneficial trickle down into civilian technology always struck me as very odd. It seems like an absurdly inefficient and roundabout way of funding R&D. If the government wants to invest in research they should just invest in research.

dredmorbius 9y ago
Whilst agreeing in part, the history of martially-motivated technical development through all of human history is remarkable. I'd argue it's been a vastly greater influence than so-called market motivations. As an evolutionary selective pressure, war and military necessity are unparalleled. Re-reading Samuel B. Griffith's translation of The Art of War, I noticed that he mentions, in 1963, Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, which had only begun delivering volumes (the work remains in progress). That would include not only metalurgy, but entire volumes devoted to both martial and marine technologies.

zpatel 9y ago

yes but the weapon systems may be sold or transferred to some countries like Israel/Saudi Arabia eventually.. how would you view their use on protesters or civilians by them or would their be international laws that would prevent such use ?

samirillian 9y ago

As Carl Jung might say, just because a thing has base origins, it doesn't mean that it has to be a base thing. Google should not shrug and say "from violence we came to violence we will return." I'm moved by the people speaking out, as much as I am disappointed to hear of Mr. Schmidt's involvement with the Pentagon.

strainer 9y ago

They cost a great deal of R&D budget for their role in the development IT technology, and the larger part of development came from non military research, from academia and companies like Bell Labs. The Google workers urging their CEO to pull out of Pentagon projects are the ones who do not have such short memories as to be distracted from the blatant deceptions and disasters carried out in recent history, with no sign of relenting.