7 ms·

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

by chellam 8y ago

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.
        RyanZAG 8y ago
        If you ever end up in a war with China, you'll be seeing plenty of drones. Obviously China doesn't use drones for killing terrorists - China doesn't kill terrorists because terrorists have no way to get into China in the first place.
        simion314 8y ago
        So if China does X US can do it too, also if China could do X but we do not know for sure then US can also do X. Using this logic then US can do anything with the exception of the things you are 100% sure China(or insert other country here) is not and will not do it. This means surveillance, killer robots, black magic,genetically enhanced humans, illegal experiments and procedures, is a valid tool for US because "what if we have a war with China, we must have same tools as them"
        RyanZAG 8y ago
        Not so, nobody forces anybody to compete in an arms race. My point is that there is an arms race - and inventions such as AI for war are part of that arms race and are being developed. These are very easy inventions too, given the widely available and extremely powerful software and hardware. These are facts. No amount of upsetting moral arguments make the arms race go away. The question is: should America compete in the arms race? I don't know. But there are big consequences either way.
        simion314 8y ago
        Sure, you are not forced, I said "CAN", Say US wants to spend a lot of many with some black magic consultant that could assassinate at a distance, you can justify it by launching a rumor that China does it too or probably does it or it will do it. So you throw away any moral discussions by blaming China , they do it so we have no choice.
        RyanZAG 8y ago
      - ionised 8y ago
        Doesn't seem like the US one does either.
  - qbaqbaqba 8y ago
    The US were the only one to use atomic weapons on a already defeated enemy/at all.
    - ISL 8y ago
      The Japanese were hardly already defeated. Had the bombs not been dropped, the United States would have invaded Japan directly, island by island, until the country surrendered. The loss of life on both sides would have been tremendous. Source: My grandfather had orders to go and do exactly that when the dropping of the bombs ended the war.
      - giobox 8y ago
        This is of course one of the justifications American leaders used, and as always the victor gets to set the perceived historical narrative. Politically it was extremely important for the US to believe the bomb materially shortened the war given the huge amount of resources the Manhattan Project had consumed that otherwise could have been invested elsewhere in the war effort, especially when the military had to justify the incredible expense to Congress (adjusted for inflation the total cost is around 30 billion in 2018 dollars). I've recently been reading the excellent "The Making of The Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes which covers the events of this period in much detail. The US had already been ridiculously effective using firebombing to level Japanese cities with their B-29s - so much so, they actually had to consider slowing down/changing targets to leave enough behind to use the Atomic Bomb on: there was almost nothing left worth hitting in strategic terms. By the time the bomb was dropped Japan was largely a beaten nation already considering surrender, Tokyo a smoldering rubble pile save for the Imperial Palace. "The bomb simply had to be used -- so much money had been expended on it. Had it failed, how would we have explained the huge expenditure? Think of the public outcry there would have been... The relief to everyone concerned when the bomb was finished and dropped was enormous." - AJP Taylor. Of course no one can say with certainty, but I certainly don't consider the answer to this question to be a simple one.
        philwelch 8y ago
        The US had no way of knowing for sure what the top-level strategic decisions were in Japan. All they knew was that, throughout the war, Japanese troops virtually never surrendered, repeatedly fought to the death, and engaged in outright suicidal tactics including Kamikaze attacks. This persistence not only continued but intensified on Okinawa. There was no reason to believe that the Japanese military would ever stop short of fighting to the bloody end. Even after Nagasaki, it took personal intervention from the Emperor and the foiling of an attempted coup for Japan to surrender. Of course, dropping the bomb and developing the bomb are two distinct, albeit related, ethical questions.
  - mtgx 8y ago
    You can't just claim something like that as if it was a fact. Maybe it would be better for the world for Switzerland to have the most advanced AI. Why does it need to be the US, especially in the rapidly deteriorating political climate from the past 2 decades?
    - philwelch 8y ago
      If e.g. France was willing to step up, and had a flourishing tech industry and a track record of responsible global leadership, that would be great. They seem to have their shit together slightly better than the US does, at this point. But, even at our worst, the US is a better custodian of this kind of power than either China or Russia, and those are the only two other countries that would be remotely interested in this kind of technology.
      - ssijak 8y ago
        Please tell me what was the last time when China attacked someone across the globe (or anywhere). When was the last time Russia attacked someone across the globe (yes they have wars on their borders, but tell me what would happen if Russia builds the military base in Mexico like NATO does at Russia borders)? Now tell me when was the last year when USA was not in a war? I don`t know how somebody rationalizes deaths of millions of civilians caused by USA/NATO army/interventions, which acted in non-defense, but I for sure know that they would not rationalize it anymore if they would happen to be on the receiving and of "democratization".
        Hroble 8y ago
        Yeah, I'm sure USA would go to war with Mexico, deny it and annex a part of it. Russia has military bases near NATO countries as well. I'm not rationalising USA army interventions but comparing it to Russia in this case is ridiculous.
        ssijak 8y ago
        Tell that to Kuba when Russia tried to install army equipment there. And USA has about 800 military bases in the whole world outside of USA. Russia has 8 or 9 outside of Russia. USA is spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually just to support those military bases. I know I would be pissed about that if I were a US citizen.
  - mattlondon 8y ago
    > It's far better for the world that the United States developed atomic weapons before either Germany or the Soviets did. [citation needed] The US having nuclear weapons didn't work out so well for the 70,000-120,000 innocent civilians that were killed in the attack on Hiroshima.[1] I don't have handy access for how many innocent civilians were killed in Nagasaki but I would assume it was similar. Would the Nazis have done the same thing? We dont know, and we cant know. But what we do know is that despite the Soviets/Russia, France, UK, China, India, Pakistan and probably Israel and North Korea having the capability, only the US has used nuclear weapons for indiscriminate & wholesale massacre. So with respect, I really dont think you can go around trumpeting how it was "far better for the world" for this to happen when there is zero evidence to support that viewpoint, and at least 70,000-120,000 reasons to refute it. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
    - t1lthesky 8y ago
      Come on are you really making this argument? That we cant know if it was better for the USA or Nazi Germany to have nuclear weapons? Like, say you have to go back in time and give nuclear weapons to Nazi Germany or the USA during ww2.. you would throw up your hands and say we can't know who the weapons should go to?
      - nightfreeze 8y ago
        If I understand correctly, you're saying that Germany and Russia shouldn't have had nuclear weapons because they would have used them, while arguing that it was right that they went to the Americans, in spite of the fact that they used them. This does not seem like a valid position.
        wilsonnb2 8y ago
        They didn't mention the USSR/Russia at all, just Nazi Germany. Their position is quite obviously that the US having nuclear weapons and the end of WW2 was better than Nazi Germany having them. It has nothing to do with whether or not they would have used them. The reason that it was better for the US to have them is because Nazi Germany was conquering sovereign countries through military action, not to mention engaging in the industrialized genocide of millions of people. Their position rests on the fact that most people agree that the Allies were the "good guys" and the Axis were the "bad guys" in WW2, which is not a position that really has to be defended.
  - fwip 8y ago
    I'm sure the German and Soviet scientists thought that it would be best if they developed nukes first, too. How sure are you that the present-day United States is the "right" group to have AI-controlled murder-drones?
- oh-kumudo 8y ago
  That claim is subject to different perspective. This might not represent as a problem for someone else.
- ehsankia 8y ago
  Would you rather use Google self-driving car, or one made by a random hacker start-up[0]? Similarly, would you rather your military use AI from a low tier company? https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/7/15933554/george-hotz-hacking-self-driving-cars-comma-ai https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/7/15933554/george-hotz-hacki...
  - izacus 8y ago
    This is not a binary choice nor a necessety.
  - zoltaan 8y ago
    I don't get it. Do you suggest that Google or big players make things better than anyone else? Or other way around, small startups cannot make good products? I believe if it was so then only companies starting with 1000+ people could do anything useful, small startups were doomed to fail, also big player could never do wrong. Sounds a bit simplistic and contrary to countless examples from life.
    - fixermark 8y ago
      In the specific space of machine learning in life-critical applications, I generally prefer product from established companies with reputation to sub-1000 startups. The incentives to cut corners and go to market are much higher for small startups with short runways. I don't want corners cut when lives are on the line.
      - zoltaan 8y ago
        "I don't want corners cut when lives are on the line" ...still not sure if you are talking about the (heavily) cost optimising conglomerates or not....if we agree to constrain the topic to finances leaving out innovative ideas, ethics, integrity, trustworthiness, etc. where conglomerates may be loose with standards. Also do you know how Apple and Google started? (I hoped the suggestion will get through without stating the obvious, but it did not)
- taneq 8y ago
  Is it better to develop weapons tech for your own in-group, or to risk being on the receiving end of weapons tech that another group developed and against which you can't defend yourself due to your earlier principled stand?
  - irb 8y ago
    I don't think it's a given that if you don't develop a certain type of weapon it renders you unable to defend yourself against it.
    - taneq 8y ago
      No, but it's a given that if you don't develop weapons tech at all, it renders you unable to defend against weapons that you would otherwise be able to counter.
throwaway2048 8y ago
Inevitable isnt the same thing as right. After all, everyone inevitably dies, so why not murder them.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  If someone will inevitably develop nuclear weapons, then it is right to develop nuclear weapons even if it "just" create s mutually assured destruction, as opposed to abstaining and thus ensuring dominance of whoever does decide to develop them.
ISL 8y ago
The only things we can change in life are our own choices.
- bcoates 8y ago
  The entire point of weapons is that they give you significant influence over other people's choices.
  - mbowcutt 8y ago
    You can say that about violence in general
randcraw 8y ago
Probably someone else will do the dirty deed, but now 1) it won't be Google, and 2) it'll be someone willing to do more evil than Google. That said, your argument does not avoid complicity in behaving badly or potentially doing so. It says only, "I'm a shit, but I'm willing to be a shit because there are other shitty people in the world who will behave badly even if I behave well, so I choose to behave badly because it serves me and the outcome is probably the same either way." Of course, if your business partners adopt the same Machiavellian philosophy toward you that you espouse, one day they'll probably speak those very words when they turn against you, since someone else probably would have.
commandlinefan 8y ago
> Someone will fill the void. Especially since Google is publishing their results for every void-filler out there to review. Unless they plan to start hiding results that might have military applications?

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.
      - RyanZAG 8y ago
        If you ever end up in a war with China, you'll be seeing plenty of drones. Obviously China doesn't use drones for killing terrorists - China doesn't kill terrorists because terrorists have no way to get into China in the first place.
        simion314 8y ago
        So if China does X US can do it too, also if China could do X but we do not know for sure then US can also do X. Using this logic then US can do anything with the exception of the things you are 100% sure China(or insert other country here) is not and will not do it. This means surveillance, killer robots, black magic,genetically enhanced humans, illegal experiments and procedures, is a valid tool for US because "what if we have a war with China, we must have same tools as them"
        RyanZAG 8y ago
        Not so, nobody forces anybody to compete in an arms race. My point is that there is an arms race - and inventions such as AI for war are part of that arms race and are being developed. These are very easy inventions too, given the widely available and extremely powerful software and hardware. These are facts. No amount of upsetting moral arguments make the arms race go away. The question is: should America compete in the arms race? I don't know. But there are big consequences either way.
        simion314 8y ago
        Sure, you are not forced, I said "CAN", Say US wants to spend a lot of many with some black magic consultant that could assassinate at a distance, you can justify it by launching a rumor that China does it too or probably does it or it will do it. So you throw away any moral discussions by blaming China , they do it so we have no choice.
        RyanZAG 8y ago
    - ionised 8y ago
      Doesn't seem like the US one does either.
- qbaqbaqba 8y ago
  The US were the only one to use atomic weapons on a already defeated enemy/at all.
  - ISL 8y ago
    The Japanese were hardly already defeated. Had the bombs not been dropped, the United States would have invaded Japan directly, island by island, until the country surrendered. The loss of life on both sides would have been tremendous. Source: My grandfather had orders to go and do exactly that when the dropping of the bombs ended the war.
    - giobox 8y ago
      This is of course one of the justifications American leaders used, and as always the victor gets to set the perceived historical narrative. Politically it was extremely important for the US to believe the bomb materially shortened the war given the huge amount of resources the Manhattan Project had consumed that otherwise could have been invested elsewhere in the war effort, especially when the military had to justify the incredible expense to Congress (adjusted for inflation the total cost is around 30 billion in 2018 dollars). I've recently been reading the excellent "The Making of The Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes which covers the events of this period in much detail. The US had already been ridiculously effective using firebombing to level Japanese cities with their B-29s - so much so, they actually had to consider slowing down/changing targets to leave enough behind to use the Atomic Bomb on: there was almost nothing left worth hitting in strategic terms. By the time the bomb was dropped Japan was largely a beaten nation already considering surrender, Tokyo a smoldering rubble pile save for the Imperial Palace. "The bomb simply had to be used -- so much money had been expended on it. Had it failed, how would we have explained the huge expenditure? Think of the public outcry there would have been... The relief to everyone concerned when the bomb was finished and dropped was enormous." - AJP Taylor. Of course no one can say with certainty, but I certainly don't consider the answer to this question to be a simple one.
      - philwelch 8y ago
        The US had no way of knowing for sure what the top-level strategic decisions were in Japan. All they knew was that, throughout the war, Japanese troops virtually never surrendered, repeatedly fought to the death, and engaged in outright suicidal tactics including Kamikaze attacks. This persistence not only continued but intensified on Okinawa. There was no reason to believe that the Japanese military would ever stop short of fighting to the bloody end. Even after Nagasaki, it took personal intervention from the Emperor and the foiling of an attempted coup for Japan to surrender. Of course, dropping the bomb and developing the bomb are two distinct, albeit related, ethical questions.
- mtgx 8y ago
  You can't just claim something like that as if it was a fact. Maybe it would be better for the world for Switzerland to have the most advanced AI. Why does it need to be the US, especially in the rapidly deteriorating political climate from the past 2 decades?
  - philwelch 8y ago
    If e.g. France was willing to step up, and had a flourishing tech industry and a track record of responsible global leadership, that would be great. They seem to have their shit together slightly better than the US does, at this point. But, even at our worst, the US is a better custodian of this kind of power than either China or Russia, and those are the only two other countries that would be remotely interested in this kind of technology.
    - ssijak 8y ago
      Please tell me what was the last time when China attacked someone across the globe (or anywhere). When was the last time Russia attacked someone across the globe (yes they have wars on their borders, but tell me what would happen if Russia builds the military base in Mexico like NATO does at Russia borders)? Now tell me when was the last year when USA was not in a war? I don`t know how somebody rationalizes deaths of millions of civilians caused by USA/NATO army/interventions, which acted in non-defense, but I for sure know that they would not rationalize it anymore if they would happen to be on the receiving and of "democratization".
      - Hroble 8y ago
        Yeah, I'm sure USA would go to war with Mexico, deny it and annex a part of it. Russia has military bases near NATO countries as well. I'm not rationalising USA army interventions but comparing it to Russia in this case is ridiculous.
        ssijak 8y ago
        Tell that to Kuba when Russia tried to install army equipment there. And USA has about 800 military bases in the whole world outside of USA. Russia has 8 or 9 outside of Russia. USA is spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually just to support those military bases. I know I would be pissed about that if I were a US citizen.
- mattlondon 8y ago
  > It's far better for the world that the United States developed atomic weapons before either Germany or the Soviets did. [citation needed] The US having nuclear weapons didn't work out so well for the 70,000-120,000 innocent civilians that were killed in the attack on Hiroshima.[1] I don't have handy access for how many innocent civilians were killed in Nagasaki but I would assume it was similar. Would the Nazis have done the same thing? We dont know, and we cant know. But what we do know is that despite the Soviets/Russia, France, UK, China, India, Pakistan and probably Israel and North Korea having the capability, only the US has used nuclear weapons for indiscriminate & wholesale massacre. So with respect, I really dont think you can go around trumpeting how it was "far better for the world" for this to happen when there is zero evidence to support that viewpoint, and at least 70,000-120,000 reasons to refute it. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
  - t1lthesky 8y ago
    Come on are you really making this argument? That we cant know if it was better for the USA or Nazi Germany to have nuclear weapons? Like, say you have to go back in time and give nuclear weapons to Nazi Germany or the USA during ww2.. you would throw up your hands and say we can't know who the weapons should go to?
    - nightfreeze 8y ago
      If I understand correctly, you're saying that Germany and Russia shouldn't have had nuclear weapons because they would have used them, while arguing that it was right that they went to the Americans, in spite of the fact that they used them. This does not seem like a valid position.
      - wilsonnb2 8y ago
        They didn't mention the USSR/Russia at all, just Nazi Germany. Their position is quite obviously that the US having nuclear weapons and the end of WW2 was better than Nazi Germany having them. It has nothing to do with whether or not they would have used them. The reason that it was better for the US to have them is because Nazi Germany was conquering sovereign countries through military action, not to mention engaging in the industrialized genocide of millions of people. Their position rests on the fact that most people agree that the Allies were the "good guys" and the Axis were the "bad guys" in WW2, which is not a position that really has to be defended.
- fwip 8y ago
  I'm sure the German and Soviet scientists thought that it would be best if they developed nukes first, too. How sure are you that the present-day United States is the "right" group to have AI-controlled murder-drones?
oh-kumudo 8y ago
That claim is subject to different perspective. This might not represent as a problem for someone else.
ehsankia 8y ago
Would you rather use Google self-driving car, or one made by a random hacker start-up[0]? Similarly, would you rather your military use AI from a low tier company? https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/7/15933554/george-hotz-hacking-self-driving-cars-comma-ai https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/7/15933554/george-hotz-hacki...
- izacus 8y ago
  This is not a binary choice nor a necessety.
- zoltaan 8y ago
  I don't get it. Do you suggest that Google or big players make things better than anyone else? Or other way around, small startups cannot make good products? I believe if it was so then only companies starting with 1000+ people could do anything useful, small startups were doomed to fail, also big player could never do wrong. Sounds a bit simplistic and contrary to countless examples from life.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    In the specific space of machine learning in life-critical applications, I generally prefer product from established companies with reputation to sub-1000 startups. The incentives to cut corners and go to market are much higher for small startups with short runways. I don't want corners cut when lives are on the line.
    - zoltaan 8y ago
      "I don't want corners cut when lives are on the line" ...still not sure if you are talking about the (heavily) cost optimising conglomerates or not....if we agree to constrain the topic to finances leaving out innovative ideas, ethics, integrity, trustworthiness, etc. where conglomerates may be loose with standards. Also do you know how Apple and Google started? (I hoped the suggestion will get through without stating the obvious, but it did not)
taneq 8y ago
Is it better to develop weapons tech for your own in-group, or to risk being on the receiving end of weapons tech that another group developed and against which you can't defend yourself due to your earlier principled stand?
- irb 8y ago
  I don't think it's a given that if you don't develop a certain type of weapon it renders you unable to defend yourself against it.
  - taneq 8y ago
    No, but it's a given that if you don't develop weapons tech at all, it renders you unable to defend against weapons that you would otherwise be able to counter.

throwaway2048 8y ago

Inevitable isnt the same thing as right. After all, everyone inevitably dies, so why not murder them.

PeterisP 8y ago
If someone will inevitably develop nuclear weapons, then it is right to develop nuclear weapons even if it "just" create s mutually assured destruction, as opposed to abstaining and thus ensuring dominance of whoever does decide to develop them.

ISL 8y ago

The only things we can change in life are our own choices.

bcoates 8y ago
The entire point of weapons is that they give you significant influence over other people's choices.
- mbowcutt 8y ago
  You can say that about violence in general

randcraw 8y ago

Probably someone else will do the dirty deed, but now 1) it won't be Google, and 2) it'll be someone willing to do more evil than Google. That said, your argument does not avoid complicity in behaving badly or potentially doing so. It says only, "I'm a shit, but I'm willing to be a shit because there are other shitty people in the world who will behave badly even if I behave well, so I choose to behave badly because it serves me and the outcome is probably the same either way." Of course, if your business partners adopt the same Machiavellian philosophy toward you that you espouse, one day they'll probably speak those very words when they turn against you, since someone else probably would have.

commandlinefan 8y ago

> Someone will fill the void. Especially since Google is publishing their results for every void-filler out there to review. Unless they plan to start hiding results that might have military applications?