Disclaimer: I also work at Google I think that the problem is more specific than working with the military or developing weapons, and it's important to disenta

Disclaimer: I also work at Google I think that the problem is more specific than working with the military or developing weapons, and it's important to disentangle the more broad concerns with military work versus the concerns about this specific project occurring at Google. I personally would not like to work on developing weapons but it's definitely much harder to defend a position such as "building ships for the U.S Navy is evil". The problem with Project Maven is plugging A.I. into drones. Sure, you can argue that A.I. today is limited and the technology isn't there to make them autonomous. However, perception/object detection is a huge component of what would be needed as part of an intelligence that can run a drone autonomously. Then you arrive at basically 2 questions 1. Is Google's participation Project Maven making it easier for the Department of Defense to develop fully automated drones, or will they always leave a human in the loop? 2. Is enabling the Department of Defense to develop automated drones ethical? #1 Yes, Project Maven enables automated drones. Sure, the Department of Defense could get automated perception technology from somewhere else, but that is in fact what the parent post is proposing Google should let the Department of Defense do. Also, A.I. advances very quickly and if the project continues there may be other ways in which Google is enabling full automation of drones, for example reinforcement-learning based control. I personally do not trust that the Department of Defense will not develop automated drones if they have the capability to do so. This is because they will probably see it as an arms race, and automating drones will serve most of the aims of their organization far too well to be put off indefinitely. #2 I believe it is unethical to facilitate the development of fully autonomous, intelligent weapons. It's hard to make a stronger case than the video someone else has linked elsewhere in this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM -The potential for chaos and destruction is very high. -The capability to find and eliminate targets will likely precede the ability to make ethical decisions, and human ethical oversight of the kill decisions will be reduced especially if the drones are scaled up For more on this check out http://autonomousweapons.org/ http://autonomousweapons.org/