10 ms·

The best way to lead is by example. Thank you, Googlers. The choice not to accept business is a hard one. I've recently turned away from precision-metrology wo

by ISL 8y ago

The best way to lead is by example. Thank you, Googlers. The choice not to accept business is a hard one. I've recently turned away from precision-metrology work where I couldn't be certain of its intent; in every other way, it was precisely the sort of work I'd like to do, and the compensation was likely to be good. These stated principles are very much in line with those that I've chosen; a technology's primary purpose and intent must be for non-offensive and non-surveillance purposes. We should have a lot of respect for a company's clear declaration of work which it will not do.

MarkMMullin 8y ago
That's a pity - as someone in stereo machine vision, metrology is something we really really need for a huge range of applications - that said, if its feeding an autonomous armed targeting system, I agree. We really need to decide as a species we want to continue being a species and realize that solving problems with each other by force is coming to an end. I'm not speaking from a pacifist viewpoint, just a practical one - there's pretty much no way we're not going to continue evolving vision systems in all their hyperspectral glory, and they can do a lot of good - we just cannot arm them. Ever. And surveillance is a complex question - there are enough positives it can offer not to rule it out a priori
- ISL 8y ago
  Agreed regarding surveillance. In my book, working on Landsat, JWST, or LISA = awesome. I will only direct expertise toward an imaging system like Keyhole or targeting/guidance systems if our society faces a clear and acute foreign threat.
  - MarkMMullin 8y ago
    What about street level city/town surveillance? Of course all the cop shops want to feed all their wants/warrants into it. I have no problem with this if there is a legal framework that supports it. More importantly, there are toddlers that get loose from their mothers because they are fundamentally greased pigs, or there are older members of our society who may be prone to wandering off in a daze - the ability to locate them within a very few minutes would be a good thing indeed. My own take is that I will look, I will try and recognize, but I will NEVER target. Machine is too good, sacks of meat like us have no prayer. That said, I've talked to a couple of cop shops, my position is that I will work with them when there is a framework that defines a legal basis for that level of tracking of people who clearly wish not to be tracked, even if they are bad actors. It's not a question of how far away you are, its a question of what you will track, why you will track, and what structure our society has put in place to get the benefits, not the risks. Looping back to the main point of the post, looking is OK, tracking requires societal governance, and any autonomous lethal capability, never mind action, should be absolutely forbidden, not just by law, but because we don't all want to die.
- leereeves 8y ago
  Russia reportedly has armed robots capable of operating autonomously and they preemptively refused to honor any ban, and other nations are developing their own. As terrifying as the prospect is, it's already happening.
  - MarkMMullin 8y ago
    Yes. I can only refuse to play and hope the Russians et al come to their senses, the United Nations starts to work better, etc. If we go down that road, it will be the end of most of us, if not all of us. We really have no chance against a machine that's decided to shoot us. As a species we need to have zero tolerance for it - we won't be rendered extinct by snazzy terminators, we'll be killed by the 21st century version of a Victorian steam loom. Its truly a horrible problem, because the solution can't be creating autonomous systems to kill other autonomous systems. The rest of the distinction is just data. The only way to win is not to play.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      That’s the problem with mutually assured destruction weapons (which AI bots most surely qualify as). If you accept as a given that at least one faction is building them, then the other factions’ only choices are: 1. Build your own and pray for a Cold War stalemate and 2. Don’t build your own and guarantee you’ll be destroyed.
      - MarkMMullin 8y ago
        MAD was based on the concept of the 'Nuclear Club' - the barrier to entry was the mass defect ratio, which you'd have to calculate on your own, and then you'd confront nation-state level expenses of turning that knowledge into practical engineering. It had an inherent cap on the number of possible players. Not saying it was nice, it was just manageable. The barriers to entry here are much lower. For smaller players, lethal drone prices would be at the several hundred dollar range with a six digit investment in infrastructure, and I'd have full confidence in American defense contractors to drive that price much lower, in order to protect their margins, and at scale, they'll mess up their inventory control. The only choice is to recognize as a species this cannot be done, or it will be done. This equation is not about the few agreeing not to kill the many, it is about the many realizing that this is a road to an extinction level event. I don't mean to be dramatic, but I have a system I could make kill if I wanted to, and I paid for the whole thing on credit cards. Its too easy and too efficient. The number of players can't be counted on one hand, it's a tech lone individuals could deploy. If they do then others will, you net an exponential growth rate in deployment, and then the game is over. At the end of the day, all of the pieces are already here - a motivated individual can do a lot of damage, several motivated individuals or groups can get into a squabble and the damage rises exponentially. It is simply not an avenue we can accept. The limit to entry is not financial, it is not technical, it only can be that we must not. I'm pleased Google has defined their ethics as a company, I just argue in this case we need to define our ethics as a species. We cannot build these because if we do they will get loose, they will be used, and it will be a tragedy. We must all agree that arming autonomous machines is beyond the pale, for any one, for any reason. As soon as one is built, your destruction is guaranteed, regardless of whether you too build one. .
chellam 8y ago
Turning away will slow things down but AI for military applications will happen. Someone will fill the void.
- staticassertion 8y ago
  That doesn't make it ok to be the one to fill it.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    On a geopolitical level, it does. It's far better for the world that the United States developed atomic weapons before either Germany or the Soviets did.
    - RyanZAG 8y ago
      It's a good point, and if anybody thinks an arms race isn't already happening then they are very naive. While we're debating the morals of this, the Chinese, Russians and many others are trying to make it happen. For all we know, they may have already succeeded, and we're discussing the morals of it while it's already in full production a few thousand miles away. The relevant research papers, knowledge and skills are widely available across the world. There are some advanced courses at Chinese universities right now that can only be seen as 'AI for military'.
      - philwelch 8y ago
        And I can almost guarantee that, unlike the US, the Russian and Chinese militarized AI programs are not optimized for minimizing civilian casualties.
        marricks 8y ago
        Really? Looking at drone strike causualities you’d have no clue how much the US even tries. Its funny cause I haven’t heard of large scale Chinese or Russian drones flying over other countries targeting terrorists but ending up murdering children on more than one occasion. Perhaps these technologies can be just evil and the US is the only country powerful enough to get away with using them. I really have no stomach for just a vapid excuse, and I cannot fathom how so many people fall for it.
Terretta 8y ago
> ”non-surveillance purposes” Not what it says. It says: “...surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.” Thanks to leaks, we have a glimpse of the new normal.

by ISL 8y ago

MarkMMullin 8y ago

That's a pity - as someone in stereo machine vision, metrology is something we really really need for a huge range of applications - that said, if its feeding an autonomous armed targeting system, I agree. We really need to decide as a species we want to continue being a species and realize that solving problems with each other by force is coming to an end. I'm not speaking from a pacifist viewpoint, just a practical one - there's pretty much no way we're not going to continue evolving vision systems in all their hyperspectral glory, and they can do a lot of good - we just cannot arm them. Ever. And surveillance is a complex question - there are enough positives it can offer not to rule it out a priori

ISL 8y ago
Agreed regarding surveillance. In my book, working on Landsat, JWST, or LISA = awesome. I will only direct expertise toward an imaging system like Keyhole or targeting/guidance systems if our society faces a clear and acute foreign threat.
- MarkMMullin 8y ago
  What about street level city/town surveillance? Of course all the cop shops want to feed all their wants/warrants into it. I have no problem with this if there is a legal framework that supports it. More importantly, there are toddlers that get loose from their mothers because they are fundamentally greased pigs, or there are older members of our society who may be prone to wandering off in a daze - the ability to locate them within a very few minutes would be a good thing indeed. My own take is that I will look, I will try and recognize, but I will NEVER target. Machine is too good, sacks of meat like us have no prayer. That said, I've talked to a couple of cop shops, my position is that I will work with them when there is a framework that defines a legal basis for that level of tracking of people who clearly wish not to be tracked, even if they are bad actors. It's not a question of how far away you are, its a question of what you will track, why you will track, and what structure our society has put in place to get the benefits, not the risks. Looping back to the main point of the post, looking is OK, tracking requires societal governance, and any autonomous lethal capability, never mind action, should be absolutely forbidden, not just by law, but because we don't all want to die.
leereeves 8y ago
Russia reportedly has armed robots capable of operating autonomously and they preemptively refused to honor any ban, and other nations are developing their own. As terrifying as the prospect is, it's already happening.
- MarkMMullin 8y ago
  Yes. I can only refuse to play and hope the Russians et al come to their senses, the United Nations starts to work better, etc. If we go down that road, it will be the end of most of us, if not all of us. We really have no chance against a machine that's decided to shoot us. As a species we need to have zero tolerance for it - we won't be rendered extinct by snazzy terminators, we'll be killed by the 21st century version of a Victorian steam loom. Its truly a horrible problem, because the solution can't be creating autonomous systems to kill other autonomous systems. The rest of the distinction is just data. The only way to win is not to play.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    That’s the problem with mutually assured destruction weapons (which AI bots most surely qualify as). If you accept as a given that at least one faction is building them, then the other factions’ only choices are: 1. Build your own and pray for a Cold War stalemate and 2. Don’t build your own and guarantee you’ll be destroyed.
    - MarkMMullin 8y ago
      MAD was based on the concept of the 'Nuclear Club' - the barrier to entry was the mass defect ratio, which you'd have to calculate on your own, and then you'd confront nation-state level expenses of turning that knowledge into practical engineering. It had an inherent cap on the number of possible players. Not saying it was nice, it was just manageable. The barriers to entry here are much lower. For smaller players, lethal drone prices would be at the several hundred dollar range with a six digit investment in infrastructure, and I'd have full confidence in American defense contractors to drive that price much lower, in order to protect their margins, and at scale, they'll mess up their inventory control. The only choice is to recognize as a species this cannot be done, or it will be done. This equation is not about the few agreeing not to kill the many, it is about the many realizing that this is a road to an extinction level event. I don't mean to be dramatic, but I have a system I could make kill if I wanted to, and I paid for the whole thing on credit cards. Its too easy and too efficient. The number of players can't be counted on one hand, it's a tech lone individuals could deploy. If they do then others will, you net an exponential growth rate in deployment, and then the game is over. At the end of the day, all of the pieces are already here - a motivated individual can do a lot of damage, several motivated individuals or groups can get into a squabble and the damage rises exponentially. It is simply not an avenue we can accept. The limit to entry is not financial, it is not technical, it only can be that we must not. I'm pleased Google has defined their ethics as a company, I just argue in this case we need to define our ethics as a species. We cannot build these because if we do they will get loose, they will be used, and it will be a tragedy. We must all agree that arming autonomous machines is beyond the pale, for any one, for any reason. As soon as one is built, your destruction is guaranteed, regardless of whether you too build one. .

chellam 8y ago

Turning away will slow things down but AI for military applications will happen. Someone will fill the void.

staticassertion 8y ago
That doesn't make it ok to be the one to fill it.
- philwelch 8y ago
  On a geopolitical level, it does. It's far better for the world that the United States developed atomic weapons before either Germany or the Soviets did.
  - RyanZAG 8y ago
    It's a good point, and if anybody thinks an arms race isn't already happening then they are very naive. While we're debating the morals of this, the Chinese, Russians and many others are trying to make it happen. For all we know, they may have already succeeded, and we're discussing the morals of it while it's already in full production a few thousand miles away. The relevant research papers, knowledge and skills are widely available across the world. There are some advanced courses at Chinese universities right now that can only be seen as 'AI for military'.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      And I can almost guarantee that, unlike the US, the Russian and Chinese militarized AI programs are not optimized for minimizing civilian casualties.
      - marricks 8y ago
        Really? Looking at drone strike causualities you’d have no clue how much the US even tries. Its funny cause I haven’t heard of large scale Chinese or Russian drones flying over other countries targeting terrorists but ending up murdering children on more than one occasion. Perhaps these technologies can be just evil and the US is the only country powerful enough to get away with using them. I really have no stomach for just a vapid excuse, and I cannot fathom how so many people fall for it.

Terretta 8y ago

> ”non-surveillance purposes” Not what it says. It says: “...surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.” Thanks to leaks, we have a glimpse of the new normal.