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After Facebook, Amazon is the other company I wouldn't trust to not do evil. Even if many more shareholders join in on this, I don't see Jess Bezos caring about

After Facebook, Amazon is the other company I wouldn't trust to not do evil. Even if many more shareholders join in on this, I don't see Jess Bezos caring about these things. The Amazon stock won't suffer even if he publicly says he won't listen to such shareholders. On the contrary, the stock may just shoot up. The larger question on this topic is, "If the big technology companies do not sell the technology to the governments, won't somebody else do?" Of course, the governments would find some domestic or foreign companies to buy such technology from (or even spend money on developing it). I think that's inevitable over the course of time. But such pressure on companies could possibly help shape policy too (added several adjectives to indicate how difficult this would be).

salawat 8y ago
The problem comes down to the engineers and researchers involved. As an INDUSTRY, we have some very important decisions to make, one of which is, "will we work on this type of system knowing full well what it will be used for?" Yes, everyone has their price, but the fact remains that the tools are nigh useless without the expertise of the knowledgeable people to integrate and fine tune the final product. If there is enough ethical backlash by we tech people, the progress any government makes can be set back decades. It can't be stopped at this point most likely, as the data and initial research is out of the bag as it were, but it does"t have to be carried one inch further. Personally, I won"t touch it. No benefit is worth the risk of this type of system being leveraged against a population. I've fully thought through the security, search and rescue, administrative, etc... applications, and as cold as it may sound, it is not worth it. The invasion of privacy, the chilling effects put on public discourse, the enabling of active population social engineering through ubiquitous surveillance and negation of dissidents is not a legacy worth having anything to do with.
- pfisch 8y ago
  Too many people don't care. Just look how many people are plugging away at AI even though it could easily lead to extinction level events. Even before that people were making the H bomb and even other smaller scale weapons. Too many people are too greedy and don't care. I just don't think this kind of opting out is going to do much. Maybe slow things down a little, but not that much.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    But you're confusing the purpose of "caring". You are working under the assumption that the people who care would like to modify the situation in order to prevent these things from advancing further. And of course, from that perspective you can make the argument that none of the proposed actions make any difference at all. Only outlawing the research itself has any chance of success for that, for obvious reasons. Now the simplest explanation is the explanation I'm afraid : if people are taking actions for reason X that don't have any effect on X at all, then perhaps there's simply another reason. If you instead look at the reactions in this thread as "given this valid concern, how can I use it as an argument to exercise power over others ?", then you will find people's behavior surprisingly sensible. People are discussing how to exert direct influence over how these big companies (where a lot of them work) move, and even more transparently about who should decide what. Who should decide who does things and what they're allowed to do. Does it make more sense now ?
- jiggliemon 8y ago
  In a lot of these scientific do or don’t debates - people tend to disqualify that there’s a consequence to not building the technology. In the H-Bomb example, what would happen if Oppenheimer didn’t help develop the bomb? Russia most certainly still would have. And the world would be a different place today. China, Russia, shit - North Korea are all working on super shady projects that you not I would want any part of. However that doesn’t stop the technology from being developed - and in some dire cases - not making the technology domestically puts us at a disadvantage. This isn’t me saying that Amazon should continue providing Facial Recognition software to the Government. This is just saying never doing evil isn’t always the best solution - on a global scale.
  - losteric 8y ago
    Developing an offensive weapon is different than working on domestic surveillance technology. Personally, I prefer a world where China has big-brother technology that the US does not.
    - bdhess 8y ago
      Facial recognition isn't exclusively a domestic surveillance technology. For example, it could be deployed at national borders, with satellite imagery captured in combat zones, and so on.
      - gnode 8y ago
        Nuclear weapons have minimal potential for domestic use, short of a geographically partisan civil war. Facial recognition conversely has huge potential for domestic use, and arguably little potential for foreign use in a major conflict. If anything, I would say it's only potential for use in conflict would be to improve the ability to quash resistance in an occupation, which is more destabilising to global security.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      Absolutely. An offensive weapon might be used to unfairly isolate and target innocent people. Domestic surveillance will be used to unfairly isolate and target innocent people. We all know this to be true. Therefore we should be much less apprehensive about developing offensive weapons.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  The same thing can be said about specific technologies. 1) Is it OK to work on facial recognition at all, knowing it will be abused. 2) How about machine learning in general. It is certainly being abused. Some people are worried about an AI destruction of humanity. Should all AI research be banned. 3) What about open source ML libraries? Having TensorFlow open source, certainly makes it much easier for bad actors to develop ML to do bad stuff. 4) What about open source in general. Having Linux as an open source, free software certainly enabled a lot of people to efficiently run computer systems that can be used for bad things. I am sure, that many of the surveillance systems used by the US, China, and Russia run some variant of Linux. Basically, if you are writing software, especially open source, somewhere along the line, somebody will do something bad with it.
- tejtm 8y ago
  Morals have not worked work enough with advertising who's technology is only a hair's breadth away. The sea change you allude to will have to begin further down the food chain.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > As an INDUSTRY, we have some very important decisions to make, one of which is, "will we work on this type of system knowing full well what it will be used for?" Can't this easily be defeated by breaking the project up such that different teams are involved in different parts, and none of the parts know the whole thing? E.g. they could all believe they're all involved in some new super secret product development, but not know enough about the final customer or the other parts to know it's the US government.
  - salawat 8y ago
    Hence the "as an industry" part. If you've ever read Snow Crash, the U.S. Government does something similar to exactly what you are talking about. That is why I've stated that at this point we can only delay the fruition of a state level infrastructure. Not stop it.
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  >The problem comes down to the engineers and researchers involved. >As an INDUSTRY, we have some very important decisions to make, one of which is, "will we work on this type of system knowing full well what it will be used for?" Its the same question engineers and researches who design bombers, and missiles, and weapons of all kinds should be asking themselves. Unfortunately there are always enough people devoid of morality and/or willing to defer to authority and facilitate the violence of authoritarian governments.
cornholio 8y ago
The mass surveillance global market is already huge. Meanwhile, Amazon introduces the very hardware accelerators in the cloud that can make real time tracking of billions of people an affordable reality for any government. Not only would another company step in to take this market, but Amazon stands to lose a wad of cash if it gives up it's fast mover advantage. Think figures in the tens of billions, maybe more. Not gonna happen.

salawat 8y ago

The problem comes down to the engineers and researchers involved. As an INDUSTRY, we have some very important decisions to make, one of which is, "will we work on this type of system knowing full well what it will be used for?" Yes, everyone has their price, but the fact remains that the tools are nigh useless without the expertise of the knowledgeable people to integrate and fine tune the final product. If there is enough ethical backlash by we tech people, the progress any government makes can be set back decades. It can't be stopped at this point most likely, as the data and initial research is out of the bag as it were, but it does"t have to be carried one inch further. Personally, I won"t touch it. No benefit is worth the risk of this type of system being leveraged against a population. I've fully thought through the security, search and rescue, administrative, etc... applications, and as cold as it may sound, it is not worth it. The invasion of privacy, the chilling effects put on public discourse, the enabling of active population social engineering through ubiquitous surveillance and negation of dissidents is not a legacy worth having anything to do with.

pfisch 8y ago
Too many people don't care. Just look how many people are plugging away at AI even though it could easily lead to extinction level events. Even before that people were making the H bomb and even other smaller scale weapons. Too many people are too greedy and don't care. I just don't think this kind of opting out is going to do much. Maybe slow things down a little, but not that much.
- candiodari 8y ago
  But you're confusing the purpose of "caring". You are working under the assumption that the people who care would like to modify the situation in order to prevent these things from advancing further. And of course, from that perspective you can make the argument that none of the proposed actions make any difference at all. Only outlawing the research itself has any chance of success for that, for obvious reasons. Now the simplest explanation is the explanation I'm afraid : if people are taking actions for reason X that don't have any effect on X at all, then perhaps there's simply another reason. If you instead look at the reactions in this thread as "given this valid concern, how can I use it as an argument to exercise power over others ?", then you will find people's behavior surprisingly sensible. People are discussing how to exert direct influence over how these big companies (where a lot of them work) move, and even more transparently about who should decide what. Who should decide who does things and what they're allowed to do. Does it make more sense now ?
jiggliemon 8y ago
In a lot of these scientific do or don’t debates - people tend to disqualify that there’s a consequence to not building the technology. In the H-Bomb example, what would happen if Oppenheimer didn’t help develop the bomb? Russia most certainly still would have. And the world would be a different place today. China, Russia, shit - North Korea are all working on super shady projects that you not I would want any part of. However that doesn’t stop the technology from being developed - and in some dire cases - not making the technology domestically puts us at a disadvantage. This isn’t me saying that Amazon should continue providing Facial Recognition software to the Government. This is just saying never doing evil isn’t always the best solution - on a global scale.
- losteric 8y ago
  Developing an offensive weapon is different than working on domestic surveillance technology. Personally, I prefer a world where China has big-brother technology that the US does not.
  - bdhess 8y ago
    Facial recognition isn't exclusively a domestic surveillance technology. For example, it could be deployed at national borders, with satellite imagery captured in combat zones, and so on.
    - gnode 8y ago
      Nuclear weapons have minimal potential for domestic use, short of a geographically partisan civil war. Facial recognition conversely has huge potential for domestic use, and arguably little potential for foreign use in a major conflict. If anything, I would say it's only potential for use in conflict would be to improve the ability to quash resistance in an occupation, which is more destabilising to global security.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Absolutely. An offensive weapon might be used to unfairly isolate and target innocent people. Domestic surveillance will be used to unfairly isolate and target innocent people. We all know this to be true. Therefore we should be much less apprehensive about developing offensive weapons.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
The same thing can be said about specific technologies. 1) Is it OK to work on facial recognition at all, knowing it will be abused. 2) How about machine learning in general. It is certainly being abused. Some people are worried about an AI destruction of humanity. Should all AI research be banned. 3) What about open source ML libraries? Having TensorFlow open source, certainly makes it much easier for bad actors to develop ML to do bad stuff. 4) What about open source in general. Having Linux as an open source, free software certainly enabled a lot of people to efficiently run computer systems that can be used for bad things. I am sure, that many of the surveillance systems used by the US, China, and Russia run some variant of Linux. Basically, if you are writing software, especially open source, somewhere along the line, somebody will do something bad with it.
tejtm 8y ago
Morals have not worked work enough with advertising who's technology is only a hair's breadth away. The sea change you allude to will have to begin further down the food chain.
craftyguy 8y ago
> As an INDUSTRY, we have some very important decisions to make, one of which is, "will we work on this type of system knowing full well what it will be used for?" Can't this easily be defeated by breaking the project up such that different teams are involved in different parts, and none of the parts know the whole thing? E.g. they could all believe they're all involved in some new super secret product development, but not know enough about the final customer or the other parts to know it's the US government.
- salawat 8y ago
  Hence the "as an industry" part. If you've ever read Snow Crash, the U.S. Government does something similar to exactly what you are talking about. That is why I've stated that at this point we can only delay the fruition of a state level infrastructure. Not stop it.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
>The problem comes down to the engineers and researchers involved. >As an INDUSTRY, we have some very important decisions to make, one of which is, "will we work on this type of system knowing full well what it will be used for?" Its the same question engineers and researches who design bombers, and missiles, and weapons of all kinds should be asking themselves. Unfortunately there are always enough people devoid of morality and/or willing to defer to authority and facilitate the violence of authoritarian governments.

cornholio 8y ago

The mass surveillance global market is already huge. Meanwhile, Amazon introduces the very hardware accelerators in the cloud that can make real time tracking of billions of people an affordable reality for any government. Not only would another company step in to take this market, but Amazon stands to lose a wad of cash if it gives up it's fast mover advantage. Think figures in the tens of billions, maybe more. Not gonna happen.