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How a Pentagon Contract Became an Identity Crisis for Google

168 points by lego_bot 8y ago

WaxProlix 8y ago
Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. DARPA funded the early internet, DARPA funded AI and NLP research, DARPA funded computer vision. It's not new, it's been going on forever - certainly in our lifetimes.
- umeshunni 8y ago
  Not to mention the Atomic bomb.
  - WaxProlix 8y ago
    Yeah I'm just thinking recent history -- you could probably make a case for fire, flint knapping, etc.
- xor1 8y ago
  Modern computing only exists because of wartime codebreaking and artillery calculations. This reddit post is a good writeup on the latter: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kbt3w/was_american_artillery_more_effective_and/cuwzi9t/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kbt3w/was_a...
  - VikingCoder 8y ago
    And the Nobel Prize only exists because of dynamite. So what? Now it honors peaceful efforts. Just because something is born one way doesn't define its entire existence.
    - xor1 8y ago
      The current context of this discussion is the primary driving force behind technological innovation, you seem to be addressing a different context entirely.
      - VikingCoder 8y ago
        No, you assert that that's the context. I assert that inventors and inventions need not be shackled to their origin. Case in point, it's entirely possible that ARPANET was used by foreign powers to subvert American Democracy in the 2016 election. I'm not advocating that, I'm saying it's worth recognizing. You can retort, yes, that's continued weaponization. And I can respond, that I can want to work on altruistic internet projects, and not feel "guilt" that the internet was invented by the military. And if someone subverts my project to military uses, I have every right to voice my objections.
        xor1 8y ago
        >I assert that inventors and inventions need not be shackled to their origin. How did you get the idea that I disagree with this?
  - SamReidHughes 8y ago
    We'd have modern computing without those things. There was enough demand to develop computing even without military purposes in mind. The transistor was invented at a telephone company.
    - asdsa5325 8y ago
      "There was enough demand to develop computing even without military purposes in mind" No, there was not.
      - kuschku 8y ago
        Zuse started developing his computers and programming languages before the war. Of course there would have been.
        sitkack 8y ago
        The Difference Engine was instrumental in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. It was later used by Dred Pirate Roberts to manage logistics of rum and parrots to his fleet of leased pirate ships in the Caribbean.
        kuschku 8y ago
        Zuse actually built modern, electromechanical computers, and developed software for it.
- VikingCoder 8y ago
  You don't have to "fancy yourself a pacifist" to not want to work on military projects directly. For one, you may pragmatically think it hurts your brand more than it helps your company. For another, you may think that is you wanted to work in defense, you would have gotten a job in defense. If your company starts chasing defense, maybe it's time to change companies. For another, you may think the government of the United States doesn't or no longer deserves the best weapons in the world. Perhaps another Western country does.
  - slededit 8y ago
    That last point was a major driver of leaks to the Soviet Union during the Manhattan project. Many of the scientists thought it was simply too much power to be in the hands of one nation.
    - petre 8y ago
      Weren't they under some sort of NDA? The sort that gets you and your family killed if you break it, perhaps?
      - slededit 8y ago
        They were guilty of treason, however not everyone's morals are directly inline with the law. That isn't to say that all spies were of a noble nature, some just did it for the money or to feel important.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - 0x4f3759df 8y ago
      Jordan implicated Harry Hopkins and other high officials in the transfer of nuclear and other secrets to the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan
      - 8y ago
- Jedi72 8y ago
  This type of thinking is why we haven't escaped from the prisoners dilemma yet. One day, two of our "world leaders" are going to commit to a war and all the soldiers of both sides are going to look at eachother and say 'nah, you fight it!' - and we will realise that its been the fault of the people who do the actual fighting all along.
  - rumcajz 8y ago
    > One day, two of our "world leaders" are going to commit to a war and all the soldiers of both sides are going to look at eachother and say 'nah, you fight it!' Nah. With autonomous weapons that's not going to happen.
    - SuoDuanDao 8y ago
      Then it's the fault of the people who made the autonomous weapons, which is kind of what the issue is at Alphabet right now.
- musage 8y ago
  > Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. Naturally. Why would you make a straw man that is not easy to beat down?
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  This isn't really about supporting "the military", it's about supporting an illegal assassination program of innocent children and civilians. One's warfare, one's mass murder, I still believe there's a difference between the two.
  - nradov 8y ago
    The civilian deaths are horrifying. But terrorist groups have made a practice of using non-combatants as human shields for propaganda purposes. If a terrorist leader who has killed many people in the past and intends to kill more in the future is located in a house filled with children do you take him out or let him live and continue his activities? Innocent people are likely to die either way.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      That's why you don't fight terrorism by blowing up buildings from robot sky drones. And to be clear: If you make the decision to murder a household of children, there is no justification, you are a sick, twisted individual. The justification that you might prevent other indeterminate future innocent lives doesn't change that you carried out a heinous act. You cannot claim the moral high ground against terrorism when you are acting like a terrorist.
      - kazen44 8y ago
        You fight terrorism by using soft power to give people less or no reasons to commit terrorism.
        jacquesm 8y ago
        You fight terrorism by education.
    - trhway 8y ago
      >If a terrorist leader who has killed many people in the past and intends to kill more in the future is located in a house filled with children do you take him out or let him live and continue his activities? Innocent people are likely to die either way. so, the real choice i'm facing here is _who_ is going to kill innocent people and children - me today or the terrorist leader tomorrow. Do you really think that it is a non-obvious choice?
- pera 8y ago
  You could extend this argument to pretty much anything since our own history as humans is completely tied to violence, but not because of this one should consider every person who opposes violence/war naive...
  - 3131s 8y ago
    Yes, this is true. War has been a constant for all of human history, so practically any technological advance can be attributed to warfare. Anyone who thinks that war is necessary for technological progress in 2018 has been drinking too much US military koolaid.
- _85oz 8y ago
  Hey - I am a soon to be Xoogler who just gave notice in ethical objection to Project Maven (btw, I hugely appreciate even simple words of support over the issue from this community). I don't identify as a pacifist - quite the opposite, I think we should fight Project Maven like hell. The DoD wanted to fund a communications network? Cool. A private company recruiting 10k+ engineers on a cool, creative "don't be evil" brand, and then backdooring their work into use by a defense department is not cool (I'm not saying the company doesn't have the legal right to, I'm saying it's a jerk thing to do). Sharing research, open-source code, etc is fine, and of course defense is free to poach away top engineers. But they can do that through recruiting, not their IT budget. Or if Amazon and Microsoft want to do the work, that's their choice, I never wanted to work at those companies. I think Google is missing a huge opportunity to define itself uniquely here by not canceling immediately. I believe true neutrality is to do defense for nobody, I would like there to be a premier technology company that international colleagues can work at that serves no military. I wonder how many of my coworkers can't express their solidarity because of their visa status, because the insane cost of living of the bay area, etc. I don't know.
  - tmpz22 8y ago
    Out of curiosity do you really feel "forcing them to do backdoor defense work" is an accurate depiction? Not a googler, just curious if the option to switch team or opt out of the work was available.
    - _85oz 8y ago
      I am not sure about exact plans but I have ideas of the rough ones. Obviously this is not an official statement from Google! Anyone will be able to opt-out of direct work on the project. Not sure about indirect work. In the short-term, only a few people will work directly on the project. Long term maybe some more, since the goal is to get bigger projects. Many more people will indirectly contribute to it. For example, I recently TAed the ML101 class. Will one of my students work on the project, and whats the impact of that on my complicity? Anyway, I basically think that if your company is a DoD contractor then you work for a DoD contractor, especially as an engineer. And I think the typical Googler is massively underestimating the implications of Google becoming a DoD contractor.
- js8 8y ago
  > The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. It's certainly not given, though. Post-war Japan is an example of enormous technological progress (that surpassed other nations at some point) without military emphasis. Ever since I learned about Sapolski's baboon troupe, I have been always wondering how many things that people call "natural" for humans to do are actually quite easily culturally changed. I think a fair bit.
  - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    Post-war Japan is an example of enormous technological progress (that surpassed other nations at some point) without military emphasis. This oversimplifies the issue, and insinuates that the Japanese became pacifist. In fact because of a long imperialist history Japan chose to become personally defensive - while being protected by the US forces through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation [1]. So postwar Japan effectively outsourced their strategic capability to the US and UN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_and_Security_Between_the_United_States_and_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_a...
    - js8 8y ago
      I don't think having a good defense is in contradiction with pacifism. Unfortunately, "defense" in the U.S. is more orwellian term. Anyhow, I was addressing the perception that you cannot have technological progress (or prowess) without significant military applications. Of course you can.
    - aikinai 8y ago
      You’re right that Japan’s rapid technological progress wouldn’t have been possible without hiding behind the US shield, but that’s just because it allowed them to divert resources. The development itself was distinctly civilian and not dependent on the military as GP mentioned. Also, Japan’s imperialist history was about 50 years; that’s certainly not “long” in the scheme of world history.
- jadedhacker 8y ago
  War has been forever, but you have to ask in service of what? For the US, it appears to be in favor of world dominion. The words empire and constitutional government don't really go together very well. Project Maven helps the drone program in some fashion. It helps provide support for a program that assassinates many innocent people. If you choose to not be "naive", then at least pick something that materially contributes to national defense or international peace. This program can only be seen as offense, which is a violation of the UN charter.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  All I can think of is people who eat meat, but find animal slaughter abhorrent. They can find another nice valley office to work in, put their fingers in their ears, and refuse to think about how America was built on the back of war and an effective defence force.
  - smcl 8y ago
    I'm not sure whether the point you're trying to make is: - that the high standard of living of all of the wealthy in the USA is enabled by its position as the world's main military power - you can try to appear noble and above it by quitting your job when your employer is too close to the military but you're basically complicit - that these snowflakes need to realise that computers couldn't exist without the military If it's the first then I can sympathise - however it's getting into "oh you dislike capitalism but you bought an iPhone" (or laptop, bank account, home, clothes etc) territory. I would definitely prefer more people open their eyes to the suffering our governments are causing, but objecting to your employer working directly with the military doesn't mean they're ignorant to this. I really hope it's not the second - there are a few comments floating around are getting into this direction.
    - AmericanChopper 8y ago
      The first point is what I was getting at. Although more from the perspective of “enjoying the fruits of”, rather than “complicit in”. Which seems hypocritical to me, no matter how you look at it. Especially considering we’re generally among the most highly paid professionals in the world.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    I'm watching the show "War" on PBS and it is very interesting. They start in boot camp and the soldiers (of multiple generations) discuss the process of transformation from a me first attitude to a group first attitude. I find that interesting to think about society in general and how we seem to be just a nation of me me me or at least that is how it is marketed... however, success really only comes by working together for a common cause.
- mturmon 8y ago
  One earlier example that comes to mind is Galileo demonstrating his prototype telescope to the doge of Venice in the early 1600s. The potential of the new instrument to detect far-away ships who might wish to raid the port city was apparent to the government, and they doubled Galileo's salary.
- hinkley 8y ago
  National Science Foundation grants had nothing to do with DARPA, and they started the avalanche that is the modern internet. DARPA and colleges bought you an anemic internet. NSF and Silicon Valley brought it into your homes. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercompu...
yuhong 8y ago
In the meantime, my essay has gotten little attention: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/04/google-doubleclick-mozilla-essay-final.html http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/04/google-doubleclick-moz... Even things like this (not covered in the essay) has been hard to find more info about: https://twitter.com/berendjanwever/status/775366191078641664 https://twitter.com/berendjanwever/status/775366191078641664
finnthehuman 8y ago
I am amused that _this_ of all things was what it took to get googlers to stop and take a look at what they're doing. I work somewhere that has talent bouncing to/from a military contractor and a common attitude I see is way more comfortable with the military doing "what it takes" within the rules of engagement to protect the nation than what our own golden boys in the valley are doing for dollars.
- Jedi72 8y ago
  "It's difficult for someone to understand something when his/her salary depends on not understanding it." This goes for the military contractors as well as the SV tech community.
- petre 8y ago
  Once you're in the army you have very little choice. You follow orders or go to the martial court otherwise. As a civillian you have the luxury of choice.
  - Jtsummers 8y ago
    Military members have a choice if it's an unlawful order. They may still be courtmartialed, and sometimes even found guilty. But in the case of unlawful orders it is their duty to disobey. That said, for lawful orders (even ones you find questionable, immoral, or unethical), you have no real choice.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- mc32 8y ago
  I think it's more than that. For the most part, you get paid to do what your employer asks you to do. There is no such right anywhere such that when you go to work, you work as an agent of yourself. No, you are an agent of the company paid to do what you are asked to do. Sometimes what _you_ want to do and what the _company_ wants to do is in alignment --but that's the exception. Most of the time there is misalignment. One would imagine most FB and GOOGs aren't driven innately to spy on their users --but there they are, essentially conspiring along with the companies. In other words, you're there to grind your boss's axe, not your own axe.
V-eHGsd_ 8y ago
> However, he said he thought that it was better for peace if the world’s militaries were intertwined with international organizations like Google rather than working solely with nationalistic defense contractors. I remember when sergey said nearly the same thing about china.
- JMCQ87 8y ago
  I wonder what he thinks "international" means.
cowpig 8y ago
I'm glad that google's internal culture is healthy enough for this. I wonder how the internal conversations about affecting politics, issues of privacy, etc. look.. However, I really think it would be better if these debates happened somewhere that the public could see. It has to be a biased debate when every participant is an employee of the company.
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  Well, I think this why Google has been so good at controlling their employees to stay within the margins of Google’s business interests. It creates a vibrant illusion of consequential debate and “resistance,” while keeping all the real power in the hands of a few executives. Don’t get me wrong, Google employees have ways to put a stop to things like this project. But they’re not to be found in these pseudo-battles of their internal forums. Employees have to organize outside of company channels, withdraw their labor, or quit like those who were already brave enough to do so.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - lapinot 8y ago
    Agreed. And let's not forget about google's current core business, which always reminds me of this clockwork orange cinema scene: reprograming your brain by forcefully feeding it images, thoughts and other stimuli advertising whoever pays them. Nothing is black or white, but that's already far into "evil" for me. Yet every spark of subversive action is good to take.
  - more_corn 8y ago
    This is absurd. The true power of democracy is freedom to speak. To disagree to challenge. Google does this better than any big company I've ever heard of. I literally challenged the CEO in public on the question of the housing crisis in the bay area. He responded and the conversation continued. There have been a dozen times in the last several years when healthy internal conversation at Google has changed policy. Name one time that happened at IBM.
mathinpens 8y ago
my only comment is that the opportunity to stop weaponized AI is long long long gone. the barriers to entry for modern machine learning methods are just so low and the military benefits are there. Near peer states are going to do this and we frankly cannot stop them. the train has left the station... sidenote: my impression is the next block of the small diameter bomb has a semi-autonomous feature where it can glide over a target area without a pre-sighted target-use some computer vision-recognize a tank- adjust its trajectory to hit the tank. all without a man-in-the-loop. pretty nifty. edit: also these jobs are literally hiring right now. you can polish up your cv and send it to a DOD lab and in a few months you will be using deep learning to kill. SICK!
- DuskStar 8y ago
  Regarding that SDB improvement... Isn't that something that's been done for a while? Not with image recognition, I mean, but the general "fire weapon at area and let terminal search + guidance deal with the rest" methodology. HARM missiles, Anti-Ship missiles, that sort of thing. Granted, it's probably a little bit harder to misidentify a radar installation or warship than a stationary vehicle...
  - mathinpens 8y ago
    I am actually not sure. before posting this comment I spent like 20 minutes reading the defense literature/media to get a more precise understanding of the technical details. The commentary is pretty vague but I think the difference between HARM/Anti-Ship is you fire-and-forget but before you fire, the missile does have a TARGET that the missile then is tracked onto while in this case you release the bomb to a general area and then it either identifies a target and locks on or it destroys itself in the air. I think that is somewhat different from previous smart weapons. warning: this could be apocryphal since I can't find the documentation that made this distinction explicit but i remember reading about this a few weeks ago.
    - DuskStar 8y ago
      Hmm. My recollection was that the later Anti-Radiation Missile systems would do a form of target persistence to deal with "target radar switched off during flight" issues, but that wasn't a feature of the original models, such as the AGM-45 Shrike [0]. So with that, you might have a target in mind when you fired... But the target you hit would be the one that was radiating when the missile got close enough. Automatic visual targeting is still something rather new, though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-45_Shrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-45_Shrike
hugh4life 8y ago
I have no pacifist objections to Google partnering with the Pentagon, I just don't think it's very smart for what amounts to be an information platform to be opening itself too easily to accusations of bias(even though everyone would know it's there anyway). One scenario I would plan for if I were Google is if with the emergence of webassembly that an open source browser-based mobile OS like Firefox OS might become more viable. I could definitely see some nations(I.E. Russia and China... but I could see South Korea's phone manufacturers being in favor... and many EU nations too if it were open source) being very uneasy with a US Corporation that is a pentagon contractor whose government already threatened to withhold android software to ZTE. With getting close to the Pentagon and after the ZTE threat, it will be harder to make a fuss if Russia and China were to outright ban Android.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
CORDIC 8y ago
I find this entire situation so odd. None of these people leaving Google over Project Maven had any issues with working for the largest corporate spy agency in the world. They were fine with massive data collection in the pursuit of serving people better ads. But helping analysts find objects in imagery? That’s a bridge too far.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  It might have to do with how finding objects in imagery is directly tied to killing people. Human beings tend to not like being involved in killing other human beings.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    or directly tied to reducing the chances of killing innocent people. Better or smarter imaging/targeting makes these weapons safer, not more dangerous.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      You assume that we're not willing to kill innocent people once we've identified a target near them. This also depends on who's being targeted. I'm not comfortable with Trump being able to murder anyone on the globe with pinpoint accuracy.
    - more_corn 8y ago
      No, the project was to prevent humans from having to slog through hours of footage to find vehicle tracks. This makes it easier, faster and cheaper to kill them. Not a super good use of our greatest technology. Let's keep it manual, expensive and slow. The alternative is terrifying efficient killing machines.
- grepsign 8y ago
  What's so hard to understand? I'm an aerospace engineer and I specialize in rockets. I understand that the nature of my work will almost always 100% benefit the weapons industry because there's just no avoiding it. When I started my career ~10 years ago I worked on a defense project as I was a fresh graduate and had no choice, but nowadays I make it very clear to prospective companies that while I have no issues with my colleagues working on weapons, I myself will absolutely, under no circumstances, work on defense funded projects in any capacity. Most companies from my experience are willing to work with you on this especially because a lot of them are already set up for segregated access. The fault in your thinking is that you seem to think it needs to be an "all or nothing" choice. It's not, and it doesn't need to be. I try to be green and recycle everything I can, but I don't lose sleep over throwing plastic away in the garbage because I do what I can. I'm 99% vegetarian because of my views on animal ethics and I honestly can't remember the last time I've bought meat for my personal consumption, but I have no qualms about going to a friend's backyard BBQ and eating the same grilled burgers that everyone else is enjoying because I do what I can. For this reason, I choose to not work directly on weapons, despite the fact that basically all rocket related technologies can be applied to weapons, because that is something that I can not change, so I do what I can, which in this case is refusing to work on defense funded projects.
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ggg9990 8y ago
Why has this gone on so long? Surely the optics are worse than the revenue at this point. “We hear you, we are canceling this, we deeply apologize,” blah blah.
- falcor84 8y ago
  I would assume that there are also very bad "optics" to an American conglomerate announcing to its government that they are unwilling to help with defense projects of (apparently) national interest.
  - JMCQ87 8y ago
    With the current administration, maybe it won't just be optics, but also some knee-jerk executive orders that lead to much higher costs.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  This is the start of a play for the JEDI contract, which is estimated at $10bn over 2 years. This would make that one contract responsible for ~1/4 of all Google Cloud revenue. I also think that while there is a lot of gnashing of teeth, it's not really clear that the optics here matter. Amazon & Microsoft are already doing these sorts of projects with no backlash. This is really only a story because there are people inside Google speaking out. What's pretty clear from these threads is that people who are already dislike Google, dislike this too, but it's not clear that this is having an impact on people's opinions who otherwise have a positive image of Google.
  - ggg9990 8y ago
    I’m talking about the optics to Google employees — I was not implying that they gave a crap about optics to the general public.
  - MichaelMoser123 8y ago
    your mention of a big contract sounds true, also i somehow got the impression that we did not get all the details in this story. But then JEDI seems to be about creating a cloud for the DOD [1], whereas this contract seems to be about image recognition; but what do we know... But then: why didn't they create an alphabet company for military research ? (you can even call it Google Mars or Ares). Would have been more compartmentalized away from the rest of the company (that's how the military likes it). also interesting that this item seems to have disappeared from the front page - is this an editorial practice here with discussions that have gone 'bad'? (idea for a new application: track HN stories that have been on the front page but then disappeared from it). [1] https://fcw.com/articles/2018/03/07/cloud-jedi-dod-contract.aspx https://fcw.com/articles/2018/03/07/cloud-jedi-dod-contract....
reacweb 8y ago
Often I hear about people who refuse some contract because of ethical reserves. But, we should have more people with ethical sensibility working on military projects, not less. If the only people working on military projects are sociopaths, what future are we building?
- s_kilk 8y ago
  This presumes that the people with ethical sensibilities have any power to change the structure of the MIC from the inside. On the contrary, I'd say a fundamentally rotten institution can't be reformed by a few good apples joining up to help turn civilians into red streaks on the ground.
  - cpuguy83 8y ago
    I don't know, this worked out pretty well for the death star situation.
  - Chardok 8y ago
    Hell, even the "head of Stanford University’s A.I. lab and chief scientist for A.I. at Google Cloud, one of the search giant’s most promising enterprises" who literally said “I believe in human-centered AI to benefit people in positive and benevolent ways. It is deeply against my principles to work on any project that I think is to weaponize AI.” had little to no effect on Googles direction towards military applications. She couldn't even get a publicized email out. The article certainly supports your theory.
- dev_north_east 8y ago
  I would never ever work on anything for the military or that is designed to hurt human beings. That being so, I wouldn't describe those engineers that do as sociopaths.
  - scruple 8y ago
    > I would never ever work on anything for the military or that is designed to hurt human beings. That being so, I wouldn't describe those engineers that do as sociopaths. It seems that, essentially, you're describing conscientious objection. edit/ Removed some words that weren't adding value.
tim333 8y ago
>However, [Brin] said he thought that it was better for peace if the world’s militaries were intertwined with international organizations like Google rather than working solely with nationalistic defense contractors. You could make an argument that to maximize global wellbeing that that is the better strategy? Focus on stuff to avoid civilian casualties rather than the nastier possibilities? Maybe spin it off into a specific division so people don't have to work there. AI is going to get used in warfare but we may have a choice between kill all the humans or take out the weapons while not killing humans.
vinceguidry 8y ago
Companies like Google making company culture such a visible part of their identity strikes me as the kind of wise foolishness that you find a lot in mythical narratives. Sure, you will get some very motivated employees that swallow the kool-aid, but if you think those employees' loyalties are with you, you better think again. They're loyal to the idea that you sold them on, to the gospel that you preached. Once they get it in their heads that the road you're leading them on is going to hell and not heaven, there's gonna be a reckoning. Now the faithful are going to start questioning things they wouldn't allow themselves to question years ago. Is making all this software so that Google can profit off of collecting people's data worthwhile? I hope at least one Google exec is forced to sell a yacht over this. But what I really want is that we find a way to force more accountability onto these assholes. I'm happy it happened, but I think we're going to start seeing a shift away from companies making culture such a visible part of their identity as Google did.
- exelius 8y ago
  I think you’re very wrong. Companies like Google have trained an entire generation to seek greater meaning in their work. Even if Google’s promises were hollow, millennials don’t have the cultural institutions our parents did. Thus we seek self-fulfillment in the ways we know how: at work. I work with a lot of C-suites on “the culture issue”. They see statistics like “40% of people between age 12 and 18 identify as LGBTQ” and they start to panic because their company culture isn’t so friendly to that. Things that were taboo only a decade ago are now commonplace: every kid today knows at least one trans kid, and a over half of teens identify as “somewhere in between gay and straight”. The institutions that used to prop up culture in this country (marriage, church, family, etc) are no longer a reality for most people. Corporations have lobbied successfully for more power, so the employees of these companies expect to be able to wield that power from within to make the change they want to see. Because the culture at large is so hostile to those ideas, the culture at companies is only going to become more important as time goes on. Companies that ignore it are going to have a difficult time attracting the top talent that can afford to be choosy. Companies that provide a safe, nurturing refuge will find themselves drowning in qualified applicants.
  - 8y ago
FrozenVoid 8y ago
>which uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes. Is that related to "select all tiles with X" on captcha? It often had other labels.. https://twitter.com/lachrob/status/831691552028241921 https://twitter.com/lachrob/status/831691552028241921
eternalban 8y ago
https://youtu.be/Lbjru5CQIW4 https://youtu.be/Lbjru5CQIW4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office
calimac 8y ago
This is a paid placement disguised as a news story. Google has always had contracts with a number of government agencies since it’s inception.
noetic_techy 8y ago
Funny how the supposed progressive and tolerant won't contribute to the defense of the society that allows them to be progressive and tolerant.
- zwkrt 8y ago
  There are many places one can be tolerant without having to contribute to the US government.
  - kinsomo 8y ago
    > There are many places one can be tolerant without having to contribute to the US government. But if you don't contribute, you could weaken the US government to the point where it can't resist an unambiguously intolerant foe. There are governments out there that are technologically sophisticated and much worse on human rights than the US.
  - Fins 8y ago
    There's that pretty old saying about people who do not want to feed their own army ending up feeding a foreign army. It's actually quite accurate.
- more_corn 8y ago
  Our military spending is anything but defensive. Overtly agressive and offensive? Yes. Active in most parts of the world yes. Defending our borders? Not really. I wonder how people here would feel about working on anti-missile systems. Probably much less conflicted.
xXGwarSlaysXx 8y ago
How is this any more or less morally objectionable than literally anything else Google has done, up to and including YouTube?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
more_corn 8y ago
The great news is that this is news. Google did a thing they thought was fine. They drew a line in the Sand and said we won't build a box that kills. Employees said that's not good enough. Because you're building a box that targets and makes killing easier. I'm thrilled that this discussion is coming up and leaking out into the rest of the world because we need to talk about it. Because the smart, capable people here need to think about our ethical obligation not to create terrible weapons. I assure you AI tracking in a weapon system is a terrible weapon. The test is easy. Imagine yourself on the looking at the sharp end of the weapon. Does it feel like you're in a nightmare? That's a terrible weapon. Granted, smart, capable people know not to misuse a terrible weapon, but the last thing you do when you create something is the act of relinquishing control. And I assure you the world is full of people who cannot or choose not to consider the repercussions of their actions. A weapon once created will be misused. We all therefore have an obligation not to create such things. Turn your attention towards creations which create the world you want to live in and never work on terrible weapons. I hope that this comment causes a response. I hope that it kicks off a debate. I trust that my argument is sound and I look forward to exploring the nuances of it with all of you.
- Chardok 8y ago
  Ultimately I think it was inevitable that Google was to become so heavily involved in military (https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/), but what bugs me is how intertwined this now military-industrial complex has been in our lives. It is at best misleading and worst incredibly dishonest for Google to portray itself as it is, while at the same time using people to contribute to data that goes into targeting and killing human beings. I am hoping more people begin to consider the ethics of supporting such a company.

168 points by lego_bot 8y ago

Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. DARPA funded the early internet, DARPA funded AI and NLP research, DARPA funded computer vision. It's not new, it's been going on forever - certainly in our lifetimes.

umeshunni 8y ago
Not to mention the Atomic bomb.
- WaxProlix 8y ago
  Yeah I'm just thinking recent history -- you could probably make a case for fire, flint knapping, etc.
xor1 8y ago
Modern computing only exists because of wartime codebreaking and artillery calculations. This reddit post is a good writeup on the latter: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kbt3w/was_american_artillery_more_effective_and/cuwzi9t/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kbt3w/was_a...
- VikingCoder 8y ago
  And the Nobel Prize only exists because of dynamite. So what? Now it honors peaceful efforts. Just because something is born one way doesn't define its entire existence.
  - xor1 8y ago
    The current context of this discussion is the primary driving force behind technological innovation, you seem to be addressing a different context entirely.
    - VikingCoder 8y ago
      No, you assert that that's the context. I assert that inventors and inventions need not be shackled to their origin. Case in point, it's entirely possible that ARPANET was used by foreign powers to subvert American Democracy in the 2016 election. I'm not advocating that, I'm saying it's worth recognizing. You can retort, yes, that's continued weaponization. And I can respond, that I can want to work on altruistic internet projects, and not feel "guilt" that the internet was invented by the military. And if someone subverts my project to military uses, I have every right to voice my objections.
      - xor1 8y ago
        >I assert that inventors and inventions need not be shackled to their origin. How did you get the idea that I disagree with this?
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  We'd have modern computing without those things. There was enough demand to develop computing even without military purposes in mind. The transistor was invented at a telephone company.
  - asdsa5325 8y ago
    "There was enough demand to develop computing even without military purposes in mind" No, there was not.
    - kuschku 8y ago
      Zuse started developing his computers and programming languages before the war. Of course there would have been.
      - sitkack 8y ago
        The Difference Engine was instrumental in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. It was later used by Dred Pirate Roberts to manage logistics of rum and parrots to his fleet of leased pirate ships in the Caribbean.
        kuschku 8y ago
        Zuse actually built modern, electromechanical computers, and developed software for it.
VikingCoder 8y ago
You don't have to "fancy yourself a pacifist" to not want to work on military projects directly. For one, you may pragmatically think it hurts your brand more than it helps your company. For another, you may think that is you wanted to work in defense, you would have gotten a job in defense. If your company starts chasing defense, maybe it's time to change companies. For another, you may think the government of the United States doesn't or no longer deserves the best weapons in the world. Perhaps another Western country does.
- slededit 8y ago
  That last point was a major driver of leaks to the Soviet Union during the Manhattan project. Many of the scientists thought it was simply too much power to be in the hands of one nation.
  - petre 8y ago
    Weren't they under some sort of NDA? The sort that gets you and your family killed if you break it, perhaps?
    - slededit 8y ago
      They were guilty of treason, however not everyone's morals are directly inline with the law. That isn't to say that all spies were of a noble nature, some just did it for the money or to feel important.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - 0x4f3759df 8y ago
    Jordan implicated Harry Hopkins and other high officials in the transfer of nuclear and other secrets to the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan
    - 8y ago
Jedi72 8y ago
This type of thinking is why we haven't escaped from the prisoners dilemma yet. One day, two of our "world leaders" are going to commit to a war and all the soldiers of both sides are going to look at eachother and say 'nah, you fight it!' - and we will realise that its been the fault of the people who do the actual fighting all along.
- rumcajz 8y ago
  > One day, two of our "world leaders" are going to commit to a war and all the soldiers of both sides are going to look at eachother and say 'nah, you fight it!' Nah. With autonomous weapons that's not going to happen.
  - SuoDuanDao 8y ago
    Then it's the fault of the people who made the autonomous weapons, which is kind of what the issue is at Alphabet right now.
musage 8y ago
> Technologists who fancy themselves pacifists are naive. Naturally. Why would you make a straw man that is not easy to beat down?
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
This isn't really about supporting "the military", it's about supporting an illegal assassination program of innocent children and civilians. One's warfare, one's mass murder, I still believe there's a difference between the two.
- nradov 8y ago
  The civilian deaths are horrifying. But terrorist groups have made a practice of using non-combatants as human shields for propaganda purposes. If a terrorist leader who has killed many people in the past and intends to kill more in the future is located in a house filled with children do you take him out or let him live and continue his activities? Innocent people are likely to die either way.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    That's why you don't fight terrorism by blowing up buildings from robot sky drones. And to be clear: If you make the decision to murder a household of children, there is no justification, you are a sick, twisted individual. The justification that you might prevent other indeterminate future innocent lives doesn't change that you carried out a heinous act. You cannot claim the moral high ground against terrorism when you are acting like a terrorist.
    - kazen44 8y ago
      You fight terrorism by using soft power to give people less or no reasons to commit terrorism.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        You fight terrorism by education.
  - trhway 8y ago
    >If a terrorist leader who has killed many people in the past and intends to kill more in the future is located in a house filled with children do you take him out or let him live and continue his activities? Innocent people are likely to die either way. so, the real choice i'm facing here is _who_ is going to kill innocent people and children - me today or the terrorist leader tomorrow. Do you really think that it is a non-obvious choice?
pera 8y ago
You could extend this argument to pretty much anything since our own history as humans is completely tied to violence, but not because of this one should consider every person who opposes violence/war naive...
- 3131s 8y ago
  Yes, this is true. War has been a constant for all of human history, so practically any technological advance can be attributed to warfare. Anyone who thinks that war is necessary for technological progress in 2018 has been drinking too much US military koolaid.
_85oz 8y ago
Hey - I am a soon to be Xoogler who just gave notice in ethical objection to Project Maven (btw, I hugely appreciate even simple words of support over the issue from this community). I don't identify as a pacifist - quite the opposite, I think we should fight Project Maven like hell. The DoD wanted to fund a communications network? Cool. A private company recruiting 10k+ engineers on a cool, creative "don't be evil" brand, and then backdooring their work into use by a defense department is not cool (I'm not saying the company doesn't have the legal right to, I'm saying it's a jerk thing to do). Sharing research, open-source code, etc is fine, and of course defense is free to poach away top engineers. But they can do that through recruiting, not their IT budget. Or if Amazon and Microsoft want to do the work, that's their choice, I never wanted to work at those companies. I think Google is missing a huge opportunity to define itself uniquely here by not canceling immediately. I believe true neutrality is to do defense for nobody, I would like there to be a premier technology company that international colleagues can work at that serves no military. I wonder how many of my coworkers can't express their solidarity because of their visa status, because the insane cost of living of the bay area, etc. I don't know.
- tmpz22 8y ago
  Out of curiosity do you really feel "forcing them to do backdoor defense work" is an accurate depiction? Not a googler, just curious if the option to switch team or opt out of the work was available.
  - _85oz 8y ago
    I am not sure about exact plans but I have ideas of the rough ones. Obviously this is not an official statement from Google! Anyone will be able to opt-out of direct work on the project. Not sure about indirect work. In the short-term, only a few people will work directly on the project. Long term maybe some more, since the goal is to get bigger projects. Many more people will indirectly contribute to it. For example, I recently TAed the ML101 class. Will one of my students work on the project, and whats the impact of that on my complicity? Anyway, I basically think that if your company is a DoD contractor then you work for a DoD contractor, especially as an engineer. And I think the typical Googler is massively underestimating the implications of Google becoming a DoD contractor.
js8 8y ago
> The history of human technological advancement is the history of violence and the desire for control. It's certainly not given, though. Post-war Japan is an example of enormous technological progress (that surpassed other nations at some point) without military emphasis. Ever since I learned about Sapolski's baboon troupe, I have been always wondering how many things that people call "natural" for humans to do are actually quite easily culturally changed. I think a fair bit.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  Post-war Japan is an example of enormous technological progress (that surpassed other nations at some point) without military emphasis. This oversimplifies the issue, and insinuates that the Japanese became pacifist. In fact because of a long imperialist history Japan chose to become personally defensive - while being protected by the US forces through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation [1]. So postwar Japan effectively outsourced their strategic capability to the US and UN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_and_Security_Between_the_United_States_and_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_a...
  - js8 8y ago
    I don't think having a good defense is in contradiction with pacifism. Unfortunately, "defense" in the U.S. is more orwellian term. Anyhow, I was addressing the perception that you cannot have technological progress (or prowess) without significant military applications. Of course you can.
  - aikinai 8y ago
    You’re right that Japan’s rapid technological progress wouldn’t have been possible without hiding behind the US shield, but that’s just because it allowed them to divert resources. The development itself was distinctly civilian and not dependent on the military as GP mentioned. Also, Japan’s imperialist history was about 50 years; that’s certainly not “long” in the scheme of world history.
jadedhacker 8y ago
War has been forever, but you have to ask in service of what? For the US, it appears to be in favor of world dominion. The words empire and constitutional government don't really go together very well. Project Maven helps the drone program in some fashion. It helps provide support for a program that assassinates many innocent people. If you choose to not be "naive", then at least pick something that materially contributes to national defense or international peace. This program can only be seen as offense, which is a violation of the UN charter.
AmericanChopper 8y ago
All I can think of is people who eat meat, but find animal slaughter abhorrent. They can find another nice valley office to work in, put their fingers in their ears, and refuse to think about how America was built on the back of war and an effective defence force.
- smcl 8y ago
  I'm not sure whether the point you're trying to make is: - that the high standard of living of all of the wealthy in the USA is enabled by its position as the world's main military power - you can try to appear noble and above it by quitting your job when your employer is too close to the military but you're basically complicit - that these snowflakes need to realise that computers couldn't exist without the military If it's the first then I can sympathise - however it's getting into "oh you dislike capitalism but you bought an iPhone" (or laptop, bank account, home, clothes etc) territory. I would definitely prefer more people open their eyes to the suffering our governments are causing, but objecting to your employer working directly with the military doesn't mean they're ignorant to this. I really hope it's not the second - there are a few comments floating around are getting into this direction.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    The first point is what I was getting at. Although more from the perspective of “enjoying the fruits of”, rather than “complicit in”. Which seems hypocritical to me, no matter how you look at it. Especially considering we’re generally among the most highly paid professionals in the world.
- sjg007 8y ago
  I'm watching the show "War" on PBS and it is very interesting. They start in boot camp and the soldiers (of multiple generations) discuss the process of transformation from a me first attitude to a group first attitude. I find that interesting to think about society in general and how we seem to be just a nation of me me me or at least that is how it is marketed... however, success really only comes by working together for a common cause.
mturmon 8y ago
One earlier example that comes to mind is Galileo demonstrating his prototype telescope to the doge of Venice in the early 1600s. The potential of the new instrument to detect far-away ships who might wish to raid the port city was apparent to the government, and they doubled Galileo's salary.
hinkley 8y ago
National Science Foundation grants had nothing to do with DARPA, and they started the avalanche that is the modern internet. DARPA and colleges bought you an anemic internet. NSF and Silicon Valley brought it into your homes. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercompu...

yuhong 8y ago

In the meantime, my essay has gotten little attention: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/04/google-doubleclick-mozilla-essay-final.html http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/04/google-doubleclick-moz... Even things like this (not covered in the essay) has been hard to find more info about: https://twitter.com/berendjanwever/status/775366191078641664 https://twitter.com/berendjanwever/status/775366191078641664

finnthehuman 8y ago

I am amused that _this_ of all things was what it took to get googlers to stop and take a look at what they're doing. I work somewhere that has talent bouncing to/from a military contractor and a common attitude I see is way more comfortable with the military doing "what it takes" within the rules of engagement to protect the nation than what our own golden boys in the valley are doing for dollars.

Jedi72 8y ago
"It's difficult for someone to understand something when his/her salary depends on not understanding it." This goes for the military contractors as well as the SV tech community.
petre 8y ago
Once you're in the army you have very little choice. You follow orders or go to the martial court otherwise. As a civillian you have the luxury of choice.
- Jtsummers 8y ago
  Military members have a choice if it's an unlawful order. They may still be courtmartialed, and sometimes even found guilty. But in the case of unlawful orders it is their duty to disobey. That said, for lawful orders (even ones you find questionable, immoral, or unethical), you have no real choice.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
mc32 8y ago
I think it's more than that. For the most part, you get paid to do what your employer asks you to do. There is no such right anywhere such that when you go to work, you work as an agent of yourself. No, you are an agent of the company paid to do what you are asked to do. Sometimes what _you_ want to do and what the _company_ wants to do is in alignment --but that's the exception. Most of the time there is misalignment. One would imagine most FB and GOOGs aren't driven innately to spy on their users --but there they are, essentially conspiring along with the companies. In other words, you're there to grind your boss's axe, not your own axe.

V-eHGsd_ 8y ago

> However, he said he thought that it was better for peace if the world’s militaries were intertwined with international organizations like Google rather than working solely with nationalistic defense contractors. I remember when sergey said nearly the same thing about china.

JMCQ87 8y ago
I wonder what he thinks "international" means.

cowpig 8y ago

I'm glad that google's internal culture is healthy enough for this. I wonder how the internal conversations about affecting politics, issues of privacy, etc. look.. However, I really think it would be better if these debates happened somewhere that the public could see. It has to be a biased debate when every participant is an employee of the company.

knuththetruth 8y ago
Well, I think this why Google has been so good at controlling their employees to stay within the margins of Google’s business interests. It creates a vibrant illusion of consequential debate and “resistance,” while keeping all the real power in the hands of a few executives. Don’t get me wrong, Google employees have ways to put a stop to things like this project. But they’re not to be found in these pseudo-battles of their internal forums. Employees have to organize outside of company channels, withdraw their labor, or quit like those who were already brave enough to do so.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- lapinot 8y ago
  Agreed. And let's not forget about google's current core business, which always reminds me of this clockwork orange cinema scene: reprograming your brain by forcefully feeding it images, thoughts and other stimuli advertising whoever pays them. Nothing is black or white, but that's already far into "evil" for me. Yet every spark of subversive action is good to take.
- more_corn 8y ago
  This is absurd. The true power of democracy is freedom to speak. To disagree to challenge. Google does this better than any big company I've ever heard of. I literally challenged the CEO in public on the question of the housing crisis in the bay area. He responded and the conversation continued. There have been a dozen times in the last several years when healthy internal conversation at Google has changed policy. Name one time that happened at IBM.

mathinpens 8y ago

my only comment is that the opportunity to stop weaponized AI is long long long gone. the barriers to entry for modern machine learning methods are just so low and the military benefits are there. Near peer states are going to do this and we frankly cannot stop them. the train has left the station... sidenote: my impression is the next block of the small diameter bomb has a semi-autonomous feature where it can glide over a target area without a pre-sighted target-use some computer vision-recognize a tank- adjust its trajectory to hit the tank. all without a man-in-the-loop. pretty nifty. edit: also these jobs are literally hiring right now. you can polish up your cv and send it to a DOD lab and in a few months you will be using deep learning to kill. SICK!

DuskStar 8y ago
Regarding that SDB improvement... Isn't that something that's been done for a while? Not with image recognition, I mean, but the general "fire weapon at area and let terminal search + guidance deal with the rest" methodology. HARM missiles, Anti-Ship missiles, that sort of thing. Granted, it's probably a little bit harder to misidentify a radar installation or warship than a stationary vehicle...
- mathinpens 8y ago
  I am actually not sure. before posting this comment I spent like 20 minutes reading the defense literature/media to get a more precise understanding of the technical details. The commentary is pretty vague but I think the difference between HARM/Anti-Ship is you fire-and-forget but before you fire, the missile does have a TARGET that the missile then is tracked onto while in this case you release the bomb to a general area and then it either identifies a target and locks on or it destroys itself in the air. I think that is somewhat different from previous smart weapons. warning: this could be apocryphal since I can't find the documentation that made this distinction explicit but i remember reading about this a few weeks ago.
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    Hmm. My recollection was that the later Anti-Radiation Missile systems would do a form of target persistence to deal with "target radar switched off during flight" issues, but that wasn't a feature of the original models, such as the AGM-45 Shrike [0]. So with that, you might have a target in mind when you fired... But the target you hit would be the one that was radiating when the missile got close enough. Automatic visual targeting is still something rather new, though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-45_Shrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-45_Shrike

hugh4life 8y ago

I have no pacifist objections to Google partnering with the Pentagon, I just don't think it's very smart for what amounts to be an information platform to be opening itself too easily to accusations of bias(even though everyone would know it's there anyway). One scenario I would plan for if I were Google is if with the emergence of webassembly that an open source browser-based mobile OS like Firefox OS might become more viable. I could definitely see some nations(I.E. Russia and China... but I could see South Korea's phone manufacturers being in favor... and many EU nations too if it were open source) being very uneasy with a US Corporation that is a pentagon contractor whose government already threatened to withhold android software to ZTE. With getting close to the Pentagon and after the ZTE threat, it will be harder to make a fuss if Russia and China were to outright ban Android.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

CORDIC 8y ago

I find this entire situation so odd. None of these people leaving Google over Project Maven had any issues with working for the largest corporate spy agency in the world. They were fine with massive data collection in the pursuit of serving people better ads. But helping analysts find objects in imagery? That’s a bridge too far.

daveFNbuck 8y ago
It might have to do with how finding objects in imagery is directly tied to killing people. Human beings tend to not like being involved in killing other human beings.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  or directly tied to reducing the chances of killing innocent people. Better or smarter imaging/targeting makes these weapons safer, not more dangerous.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    You assume that we're not willing to kill innocent people once we've identified a target near them. This also depends on who's being targeted. I'm not comfortable with Trump being able to murder anyone on the globe with pinpoint accuracy.
  - more_corn 8y ago
    No, the project was to prevent humans from having to slog through hours of footage to find vehicle tracks. This makes it easier, faster and cheaper to kill them. Not a super good use of our greatest technology. Let's keep it manual, expensive and slow. The alternative is terrifying efficient killing machines.
grepsign 8y ago
What's so hard to understand? I'm an aerospace engineer and I specialize in rockets. I understand that the nature of my work will almost always 100% benefit the weapons industry because there's just no avoiding it. When I started my career ~10 years ago I worked on a defense project as I was a fresh graduate and had no choice, but nowadays I make it very clear to prospective companies that while I have no issues with my colleagues working on weapons, I myself will absolutely, under no circumstances, work on defense funded projects in any capacity. Most companies from my experience are willing to work with you on this especially because a lot of them are already set up for segregated access. The fault in your thinking is that you seem to think it needs to be an "all or nothing" choice. It's not, and it doesn't need to be. I try to be green and recycle everything I can, but I don't lose sleep over throwing plastic away in the garbage because I do what I can. I'm 99% vegetarian because of my views on animal ethics and I honestly can't remember the last time I've bought meat for my personal consumption, but I have no qualms about going to a friend's backyard BBQ and eating the same grilled burgers that everyone else is enjoying because I do what I can. For this reason, I choose to not work directly on weapons, despite the fact that basically all rocket related technologies can be applied to weapons, because that is something that I can not change, so I do what I can, which in this case is refusing to work on defense funded projects.

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ggg9990 8y ago

Why has this gone on so long? Surely the optics are worse than the revenue at this point. “We hear you, we are canceling this, we deeply apologize,” blah blah.

falcor84 8y ago
I would assume that there are also very bad "optics" to an American conglomerate announcing to its government that they are unwilling to help with defense projects of (apparently) national interest.
- JMCQ87 8y ago
  With the current administration, maybe it won't just be optics, but also some knee-jerk executive orders that lead to much higher costs.
Eridrus 8y ago
This is the start of a play for the JEDI contract, which is estimated at $10bn over 2 years. This would make that one contract responsible for ~1/4 of all Google Cloud revenue. I also think that while there is a lot of gnashing of teeth, it's not really clear that the optics here matter. Amazon & Microsoft are already doing these sorts of projects with no backlash. This is really only a story because there are people inside Google speaking out. What's pretty clear from these threads is that people who are already dislike Google, dislike this too, but it's not clear that this is having an impact on people's opinions who otherwise have a positive image of Google.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  I’m talking about the optics to Google employees — I was not implying that they gave a crap about optics to the general public.
- MichaelMoser123 8y ago
  your mention of a big contract sounds true, also i somehow got the impression that we did not get all the details in this story. But then JEDI seems to be about creating a cloud for the DOD [1], whereas this contract seems to be about image recognition; but what do we know... But then: why didn't they create an alphabet company for military research ? (you can even call it Google Mars or Ares). Would have been more compartmentalized away from the rest of the company (that's how the military likes it). also interesting that this item seems to have disappeared from the front page - is this an editorial practice here with discussions that have gone 'bad'? (idea for a new application: track HN stories that have been on the front page but then disappeared from it). [1] https://fcw.com/articles/2018/03/07/cloud-jedi-dod-contract.aspx https://fcw.com/articles/2018/03/07/cloud-jedi-dod-contract....

reacweb 8y ago

Often I hear about people who refuse some contract because of ethical reserves. But, we should have more people with ethical sensibility working on military projects, not less. If the only people working on military projects are sociopaths, what future are we building?

s_kilk 8y ago
This presumes that the people with ethical sensibilities have any power to change the structure of the MIC from the inside. On the contrary, I'd say a fundamentally rotten institution can't be reformed by a few good apples joining up to help turn civilians into red streaks on the ground.
- cpuguy83 8y ago
  I don't know, this worked out pretty well for the death star situation.
- Chardok 8y ago
  Hell, even the "head of Stanford University’s A.I. lab and chief scientist for A.I. at Google Cloud, one of the search giant’s most promising enterprises" who literally said “I believe in human-centered AI to benefit people in positive and benevolent ways. It is deeply against my principles to work on any project that I think is to weaponize AI.” had little to no effect on Googles direction towards military applications. She couldn't even get a publicized email out. The article certainly supports your theory.
dev_north_east 8y ago
I would never ever work on anything for the military or that is designed to hurt human beings. That being so, I wouldn't describe those engineers that do as sociopaths.
- scruple 8y ago
  > I would never ever work on anything for the military or that is designed to hurt human beings. That being so, I wouldn't describe those engineers that do as sociopaths. It seems that, essentially, you're describing conscientious objection. edit/ Removed some words that weren't adding value.

tim333 8y ago

>However, [Brin] said he thought that it was better for peace if the world’s militaries were intertwined with international organizations like Google rather than working solely with nationalistic defense contractors. You could make an argument that to maximize global wellbeing that that is the better strategy? Focus on stuff to avoid civilian casualties rather than the nastier possibilities? Maybe spin it off into a specific division so people don't have to work there. AI is going to get used in warfare but we may have a choice between kill all the humans or take out the weapons while not killing humans.

vinceguidry 8y ago

Companies like Google making company culture such a visible part of their identity strikes me as the kind of wise foolishness that you find a lot in mythical narratives. Sure, you will get some very motivated employees that swallow the kool-aid, but if you think those employees' loyalties are with you, you better think again. They're loyal to the idea that you sold them on, to the gospel that you preached. Once they get it in their heads that the road you're leading them on is going to hell and not heaven, there's gonna be a reckoning. Now the faithful are going to start questioning things they wouldn't allow themselves to question years ago. Is making all this software so that Google can profit off of collecting people's data worthwhile? I hope at least one Google exec is forced to sell a yacht over this. But what I really want is that we find a way to force more accountability onto these assholes. I'm happy it happened, but I think we're going to start seeing a shift away from companies making culture such a visible part of their identity as Google did.

exelius 8y ago
I think you’re very wrong. Companies like Google have trained an entire generation to seek greater meaning in their work. Even if Google’s promises were hollow, millennials don’t have the cultural institutions our parents did. Thus we seek self-fulfillment in the ways we know how: at work. I work with a lot of C-suites on “the culture issue”. They see statistics like “40% of people between age 12 and 18 identify as LGBTQ” and they start to panic because their company culture isn’t so friendly to that. Things that were taboo only a decade ago are now commonplace: every kid today knows at least one trans kid, and a over half of teens identify as “somewhere in between gay and straight”. The institutions that used to prop up culture in this country (marriage, church, family, etc) are no longer a reality for most people. Corporations have lobbied successfully for more power, so the employees of these companies expect to be able to wield that power from within to make the change they want to see. Because the culture at large is so hostile to those ideas, the culture at companies is only going to become more important as time goes on. Companies that ignore it are going to have a difficult time attracting the top talent that can afford to be choosy. Companies that provide a safe, nurturing refuge will find themselves drowning in qualified applicants.
- 8y ago

FrozenVoid 8y ago

>which uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes. Is that related to "select all tiles with X" on captcha? It often had other labels.. https://twitter.com/lachrob/status/831691552028241921 https://twitter.com/lachrob/status/831691552028241921

eternalban 8y ago

https://youtu.be/Lbjru5CQIW4 https://youtu.be/Lbjru5CQIW4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

calimac 8y ago

This is a paid placement disguised as a news story. Google has always had contracts with a number of government agencies since it’s inception.

noetic_techy 8y ago

Funny how the supposed progressive and tolerant won't contribute to the defense of the society that allows them to be progressive and tolerant.

zwkrt 8y ago
There are many places one can be tolerant without having to contribute to the US government.
- kinsomo 8y ago
  > There are many places one can be tolerant without having to contribute to the US government. But if you don't contribute, you could weaken the US government to the point where it can't resist an unambiguously intolerant foe. There are governments out there that are technologically sophisticated and much worse on human rights than the US.
- Fins 8y ago
  There's that pretty old saying about people who do not want to feed their own army ending up feeding a foreign army. It's actually quite accurate.
more_corn 8y ago
Our military spending is anything but defensive. Overtly agressive and offensive? Yes. Active in most parts of the world yes. Defending our borders? Not really. I wonder how people here would feel about working on anti-missile systems. Probably much less conflicted.

xXGwarSlaysXx 8y ago

How is this any more or less morally objectionable than literally anything else Google has done, up to and including YouTube?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

more_corn 8y ago

The great news is that this is news. Google did a thing they thought was fine. They drew a line in the Sand and said we won't build a box that kills. Employees said that's not good enough. Because you're building a box that targets and makes killing easier. I'm thrilled that this discussion is coming up and leaking out into the rest of the world because we need to talk about it. Because the smart, capable people here need to think about our ethical obligation not to create terrible weapons. I assure you AI tracking in a weapon system is a terrible weapon. The test is easy. Imagine yourself on the looking at the sharp end of the weapon. Does it feel like you're in a nightmare? That's a terrible weapon. Granted, smart, capable people know not to misuse a terrible weapon, but the last thing you do when you create something is the act of relinquishing control. And I assure you the world is full of people who cannot or choose not to consider the repercussions of their actions. A weapon once created will be misused. We all therefore have an obligation not to create such things. Turn your attention towards creations which create the world you want to live in and never work on terrible weapons. I hope that this comment causes a response. I hope that it kicks off a debate. I trust that my argument is sound and I look forward to exploring the nuances of it with all of you.

Chardok 8y ago
Ultimately I think it was inevitable that Google was to become so heavily involved in military (https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/), but what bugs me is how intertwined this now military-industrial complex has been in our lives. It is at best misleading and worst incredibly dishonest for Google to portray itself as it is, while at the same time using people to contribute to data that goes into targeting and killing human beings. I am hoping more people begin to consider the ethics of supporting such a company.