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Such power may be used largely for good today with minimal false positives, but "the greater good" thinking is what drives most villains in fiction. Government

by lrvick 6y ago

Such power may be used largely for good today with minimal false positives, but "the greater good" thinking is what drives most villains in fiction. Governments using private companies to decide who deserves to die based on ML algorithms without judge or jury is morally reprehensible. Full stop. They live in another country so they don't deserve the same rights we superior americans do, right? This behavior only gets to continue to happen because of "we require secrecy to do our work" excuses which are code for "we know the public that indirectly funds us would not approve" I grew up going on jobs stalking people with my private investigator father who mostly worked fraud cases for insurance companies. Public places, license plates, collecting evidence of an injured person walking just fine... then prosecutors can use that evidence in court where it belongs. I am not saying this tech should not exist, or can't be used to serve justice in the right context. I am saying those with that kind of power must have maximum transparency and a high level of accountability. I think the NSA does important work too, but power in secrecy is a breeding ground for "the greater good" thinking. It is so easy to overstep and do things like tap lines to Google datacenters to spy on private citizens with no evidence it has ever stopped a single terrorist attack. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, who took power? The one with the most access to signals intelligence. Now that country is a surveillance state dictatorship disguised as a democracy. The US keeps trending this way too recently. Who will be the Snowden of Palintir to give it the public scrutiny required to make sure their powers stay in reasonable bounds? If a Palantir employee is reading this, maybe it could be you.

peruvian 6y ago
> They live in another country so they don't deserve the same rights we superior americans do, right? It goes beyond that. People don't care Palantir tried to do predictive policing via ML in the US because the suspected criminals were poor POC.
- cwwc 6y ago
  This may be true - but while at the SEC I used Palantir extensively on finance people (usually WASPS in the upper echelons). Was it used in a different way? Yes, likely. But still - it isn't limited to policing and war.
  - tp23 6y ago
    OK, but the work in this case drove investigations and evidence, not a drone strike into their family home. Lets not muddy the discussion, WASPs in Connecticut dont have to worry about Palantir as much as a random brown person in Asia.
    - cwwc 6y ago
      Very true. In the rare case (very, very rare), jail time. But comparatively -- yes, I agree with your point, it is nothing.
    - mc32 6y ago
      Do you think they’d have misgivings if it were a terrorist in Bosnia? I don’t think his color comes into it. It’s as if in WWII we were like, oh noes, they’re wasps (ignore Bavaria for a moment) don’t shoot! Or with Russians today, oh noes, don’t make them into all powerful boogeymen. Not everything in the world is about color. The military does not care who the enemy is, they engage without mercy as is the case in war or conflict.
      - peruvian 6y ago
        You're correct it's not just about color, it's also about class (IMO it's mostly about class, not just within America but the Global South as a class entirely as well).
AndrewBissell 6y ago
> Who will be the Snowden of Palintir to give it the public scrutiny required to make sure their powers stay in reasonable bounds? The problem is, any kind of big data dump inevitably would be met with the same excuse which is made on behalf of all big tech power these days: "it's just a private firm so it doesn't need to abide by the same limitations that would apply to the government."
- lrvick 6y ago
  I suspect public awareness of a few disgraceful mistakes (that have no doubt happened given the scale) would cause political pressure to potentially reform the laws that allowed this accountability lacking power structure to exist in the first place.
sneak 6y ago
> Governments using private companies to decide who deserves to die based on ML algorithms without judge or jury is morally reprehensible. Full stop. Governments (or, more accurately, human beings acting under color of law) deciding to assassinate people is morally reprehensible, regardless of how the targeting is done. If "private company" and "ML" are the keywords it takes to get people outraged about assassination programs, I'm fine with that, but let's make sure we know why we're upset. This is premeditated murder, and throwing around terms like "insurgent" and "rules of engagement" are just a way of legitimizing premeditated murder.
- JackFr 6y ago
  There is some nuance. Assume for the sake of argument that the United States has a legitimate interest in fighting the Taliban. Within such an exercise I hope we could agree that there is a distinction between lawful violence and unlawful violence. People of goodwill can disagree about where to draw that distinction. But 'rules of engagement' is not a mealy-mouthed weasel word. It's how we describe this distinction. (It may be likely that you don't accept under any circumstance that the US has a legitimate interest in fighting the Taliban. That's fine but it's a different discussion.)
  - lrvick 6y ago
    There are plenty of things that are legal but unethical. It is incredibly critical every citizen be capable of choosing -not- to do things that are legal and would benefit them, because they find them unethical. This is how majority held ethics graduate to becoming laws.
saiya-jin 6y ago
US is performing human inequality of the worst type for quite some time. Just to be clear, at least from non-US person point of view - US action clearly state that 'your life is worth less if you don't hold US citizenship'. We can't have 21st century discussion about race and gender equality and then ignore this glaring fault. I know some people will come and say 'you know this is how states and secret services and whatnot should operate blablabla'. Its plain wrong. Justice and equality of human beings simply don't exist if inconvenient. It doesn't matter if its my or your state doing it. And arguably the worst part - from all I could ever read on it, this different type of racism doesn't even bring any proper safety results for US that would justify it in some twisted optics. It for sure pisses tons of people all around the world though.
adolph 6y ago
Governments using private companies to decide who deserves to die based on ML algorithms without judge or jury is morally reprehensible. Full stop. Most often and historically governments used poorly fed fellows (companies of privates instead of private companies) to decide who lives or dies. Is decision by ML morally different? Does it have the redemptive possibility of making better more informed decisions?

by lrvick 6y ago

peruvian 6y ago

> They live in another country so they don't deserve the same rights we superior americans do, right? It goes beyond that. People don't care Palantir tried to do predictive policing via ML in the US because the suspected criminals were poor POC.

cwwc 6y ago
This may be true - but while at the SEC I used Palantir extensively on finance people (usually WASPS in the upper echelons). Was it used in a different way? Yes, likely. But still - it isn't limited to policing and war.
- tp23 6y ago
  OK, but the work in this case drove investigations and evidence, not a drone strike into their family home. Lets not muddy the discussion, WASPs in Connecticut dont have to worry about Palantir as much as a random brown person in Asia.
  - cwwc 6y ago
    Very true. In the rare case (very, very rare), jail time. But comparatively -- yes, I agree with your point, it is nothing.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Do you think they’d have misgivings if it were a terrorist in Bosnia? I don’t think his color comes into it. It’s as if in WWII we were like, oh noes, they’re wasps (ignore Bavaria for a moment) don’t shoot! Or with Russians today, oh noes, don’t make them into all powerful boogeymen. Not everything in the world is about color. The military does not care who the enemy is, they engage without mercy as is the case in war or conflict.
    - peruvian 6y ago
      You're correct it's not just about color, it's also about class (IMO it's mostly about class, not just within America but the Global South as a class entirely as well).

AndrewBissell 6y ago

> Who will be the Snowden of Palintir to give it the public scrutiny required to make sure their powers stay in reasonable bounds? The problem is, any kind of big data dump inevitably would be met with the same excuse which is made on behalf of all big tech power these days: "it's just a private firm so it doesn't need to abide by the same limitations that would apply to the government."

lrvick 6y ago
I suspect public awareness of a few disgraceful mistakes (that have no doubt happened given the scale) would cause political pressure to potentially reform the laws that allowed this accountability lacking power structure to exist in the first place.

sneak 6y ago

> Governments using private companies to decide who deserves to die based on ML algorithms without judge or jury is morally reprehensible. Full stop. Governments (or, more accurately, human beings acting under color of law) deciding to assassinate people is morally reprehensible, regardless of how the targeting is done. If "private company" and "ML" are the keywords it takes to get people outraged about assassination programs, I'm fine with that, but let's make sure we know why we're upset. This is premeditated murder, and throwing around terms like "insurgent" and "rules of engagement" are just a way of legitimizing premeditated murder.

JackFr 6y ago
There is some nuance. Assume for the sake of argument that the United States has a legitimate interest in fighting the Taliban. Within such an exercise I hope we could agree that there is a distinction between lawful violence and unlawful violence. People of goodwill can disagree about where to draw that distinction. But 'rules of engagement' is not a mealy-mouthed weasel word. It's how we describe this distinction. (It may be likely that you don't accept under any circumstance that the US has a legitimate interest in fighting the Taliban. That's fine but it's a different discussion.)
- lrvick 6y ago
  There are plenty of things that are legal but unethical. It is incredibly critical every citizen be capable of choosing -not- to do things that are legal and would benefit them, because they find them unethical. This is how majority held ethics graduate to becoming laws.

saiya-jin 6y ago

US is performing human inequality of the worst type for quite some time. Just to be clear, at least from non-US person point of view - US action clearly state that 'your life is worth less if you don't hold US citizenship'. We can't have 21st century discussion about race and gender equality and then ignore this glaring fault. I know some people will come and say 'you know this is how states and secret services and whatnot should operate blablabla'. Its plain wrong. Justice and equality of human beings simply don't exist if inconvenient. It doesn't matter if its my or your state doing it. And arguably the worst part - from all I could ever read on it, this different type of racism doesn't even bring any proper safety results for US that would justify it in some twisted optics. It for sure pisses tons of people all around the world though.

adolph 6y ago

Governments using private companies to decide who deserves to die based on ML algorithms without judge or jury is morally reprehensible. Full stop. Most often and historically governments used poorly fed fellows (companies of privates instead of private companies) to decide who lives or dies. Is decision by ML morally different? Does it have the redemptive possibility of making better more informed decisions?