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As a roboticist at the beginning of my career working on drones, I decided then and there that I would never make "bombs", a metaphor I used to mean anything th
by cmontella 9y ago
As a roboticist at the beginning of my career working on drones, I decided then and there that I would never make "bombs", a metaphor I used to mean anything that could be weaponized. I realized a lot of the work I was doing was funded by DARPA, and I was very cognizant about my research being used in this way. And like Dr. Kearns suggests, it's not entirely black and white. Would my path planning algorithm be used to more efficiently deliver scientific payloads to the atmosphere, or would it be used to route missiles to maximize casualties? Hard to really say, but I've avoided overtly military applications (even things like BigDog, designed to carry equipment for troops).
Sometimes the distinction is even more insidious. I did work on perpetual flight for drones, and Facebook had a perpetual flight project that had the goal of bringing internet access to remote locations in Africa. Sounds humanitarian, but I also didn't want to be responsible for subjecting poor Africans to what I consider Facebook's panopticon. Or maybe it would have been a net boon for the region? It's really hard to tell a priori, so the best I have managed for myself is just to try and stay in theory, where developments are further removed from direct consequence.
- dweekly 9y agoAs an engineer, founder, and investor I'll note that there's an ethical mandate for investors as well; when I started drone.vc I committed as a Quaker to not investing in "offensive" technologies. Separately, RE: bringing internet to new places, there's reasonable evidence to show that introducing broadband lifts GDP[1], so whatever you may think of Facebook, giving people high-speed connectivity to the whole Internet is probably a net positive. Disclaimer: I helped start Facebook's Connectivity Lab but no longer work there. [1] http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/391452529895999/WDR16-BP-Exploring-the-Relationship-between-Broadband-and-Economic-Growth-Minges.pdf http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/391452529895999/WDR16-BP-Exp...
- cbHXBY1D 9y agoMost people on this site have not trusted FB's intentions with the drone project for good reason. Ever since we collectively realized a three years ago that FB's internet.org was a wolf in sheep's clothing, most people on here have been distrusting of FB.
- mekoka 9y agoPlease note that there's a sharp distinction between bringing the Internet to new places and bringing "the Internet" aka Facebook's walled garden to new places. From a wikipedia section on Free Basics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Basics#User_experience_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Basics#User_experience_re... > In 2015, researchers evaluating how Facebook Zero shapes information and communication technologies (ICT) usage in the developing world found that 11% of Indonesians who said they used Facebook also said they did not use the Internet. 65% of Nigerians, and 61% of Indonesians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet" compared with only 5% in the US
- crpatino 9y agoDon't be so sure that "lifts GDP" is an absolute (or even a net) positive for the people in the receiving end of "introducing broadband". Specially if we are talking about underdeveloped backwaters, when you see an increase of GDP you must consider how much of it comes from increased productivity and how much from improved accounting. If this is the later, you just put a "virgin population" without the social DNA to defend itself into the reach of global capitalism. The most likely output of that is an import/export imbalance from the region to the outside world (neocolonialism) plus the empowerment of the traditional chieftains as enforcers of the absentee investment class (all the same old problems of our preindustrial world, only more so). It is a bit of the worse of both worlds for the average joe living there.
- colordrops 9y agoAlmost any technology can be weaponized. It's not about the particular technology you work on, but who it's being built for and the intended application.
- jsilence 9y agoplease help me understand how a substance that turns sand into soil, developed to green the deserts, can be used as a weapon. To me this argument that "anything can be used in evil ways" is a poor excuse used to distract from the issue.
- gpm 9y agoYou're asking how fertilizer can be weaponized? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
- fredsted 9y agoI don't think he is
- thecrazyone 9y agoNot OP, but a fertilizer is a reasonable embodiment of something that turns desert soil into something in which plants can grow
- josephv 9y agoTurning sand in to grass - this sounds like a great thing doesn't it? It's for golf courses - there are amazing golf courses in dubai that required genetically modified burmuda grass in a sandy synthetic fertilized substrate. They take huge leaf blowers and cover football fields worth of sand with it, water the HELL out of it, and pretty soon, beautiful grass in the desert. Grass in the desert is great for everyone, that wants to golf or make money off golfers. Getting grass where it isn't sustainable is not benevolent.
- russdpale 9y agoAh man, as a former straight leg grunt (meaning no plane, usually no helo or even a truck, we walk _everywhere_) anything that can take weight off is an absolute God send. We aren't blood thirsty but you would be saving a ton of knees, backs, frustration, and pain all around.
- cmontella 9y agoYeah, no doubt that tech will help you. But the line from a robot carrying your guns to a robot wielding your guns is a little too direct for me.to work on personally. It's not that I think you are bloodthirsty. I think the people you work for are.
- reacweb 9y agoIf all the engineers who have a sense of ethic refuse to work for military projects, it implies that military projects will be performed by less ethical than average people. It is frightening. IMHO, avoiding military projects because of ethic is counterproductive.
- bantunes 9y agoDamned if we do and damned if we don't?
- idlewords 9y agoYou can talk yourself into working on anything at all with this rationalization.
- reacweb 9y agoYes, even if you are completely against something. For example, if you are against GMO and work on this subject, you may give valuable insights (outside of NDA) to other GMO opponents to help their fight to stop GMO. Of course, you risk your job.
- iron0013 9y ago"Hey, somebody's gotta help kill all these people, might as well be me--wouldn't want it to be a bad guy!"
- kevinmchugh 9y agoRichard Gatling thought his most famous invention would cause wars to be shorter and less brutal. More deaths faster would mean faster surrenders, he thought. He is a weapons inventor who thought he was doing something ethical. Instead, he made war and death cheaper. He made it more likely. In his lifetime, machine guns were deployed asymmetrically, making it cheaper for colonial empires to kill large numbers of the colonized.
- supertrope 9y agoAlfred Nobel thought so too with dynamite. "Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops."
- amelius 9y agoPerhaps we need a license that excludes use of a technology for certain purposes (?)
- supertrope 9y agoLike the patent licensing terms for using AES-OCB?
- vowelless 9y agoHad the exact same predicament. Struggled with it morally, until I was exclusively working on offensive technologies ("cleanly isolating and neutralizing targets via unmanned air vehicles, out of line of sight with no gps"). That's when I quit and got some of my morality back by joining a quant firm that makes money off of other people purely for the purpose of making money and nothing else. No wonder I have such an alcohol problem...