4 ms·
There is a difference between allowing use and supporting a use case. Supporting would be, for example, adding military specific training to the model. If we we
by jmward01 2y ago
There is a difference between allowing use and supporting a use case. Supporting would be, for example, adding military specific training to the model. If we were talking about a car or a tractor nobody would bat an eye. Should companies not sell potatoes to the military? To be clear, I am not a fan of developing for the military, but the idea that a TOS will stop AI being weaponized is a bit naive. Similarly, if the goal is to responsibly introduce AI to the world then shaping the military's adoption of it by allowing its use, without specifically supporting it, is probably a good path.
- crooked-v 2y agoAlso, more pragmatically speaking, it wouldn't be all that "hard" to recreate current LLM state of the art from scratch now that the techniques are known. It's just really expensive in terms of hardware.
- squigz 2y agoWhich is a non-issue for the US military. Not a TOS, nor cost, nor technical expertise is going to stop this sort of technology from being applied to armed forces. If anyone's upset at Meta for this, they're getting angry at the wrong people...
- pempem 2y agoI think its fair to feel like telling a snake to not act like a snake is terrible (aka the military acting like the military). the turtle doesn't have to join it. Thats an option. assuming its inevitability, that even attempting to shame meta is a waste or threatening to cut access to talent or users, means change cant happen
- squigz 2y agoI don't see why I should be mad at Meta and not the armed forces that adopt this technology inappropriately.
- haswell 2y agoWhy not both? There are a myriad of reasons to be concerned about the military adopting this kind of tech. If it's reasonable to be upset at the military, it seems equally reasonable to be upset at entities that enable the military. I don't think it's a matter of "should", but rather, if you're upset at one, it doesn't make much sense not to be upset at the other.
- squigz 2y agoBecause getting mad at one is more appropriate and getting mad at the other would be pointless. Militaries will adopt this technology, whether Meta or the big names allow it in the TOS or not. I also don't get angry at gun manufacturers for the ways their guns are used; I do however get mad at legislators and citizens who enable easier access to guns and promote gun culture.
- dumpsterdiver 2y agoWho should be upset? And about what specifically? U.S. companies supporting the U.S. military has never been a point of contention afaik.
- yunwal 2y ago“Never” is definitely an exaggeration https://djmag.com/news/sxsw-cuts-ties-us-army-and-weapons-manufacturers-after-artists-boycott https://djmag.com/news/sxsw-cuts-ties-us-army-and-weapons-ma...
- dumpsterdiver 2y agoOh right, we can’t forget about the massively popular “Squirrel Flower” movement (rolls eyes).
- yunwal 2y agoSxsw has banned the defense industry from sponsoring the festival in 2025. It’s a pretty big festival.
- dumpsterdiver 2y agoA more appropriate analogy imo would be birds cleaning bugs from large animals such hippos. The birds benefit from the deterring effect of the larger animal.
- pempem 2y agoI will take that adjustment lol.
- croes 2y agoThe old “If we don’t do it someone else will” excuse. By that logic you could excuse also drug dealing and sex trafficking. There is a difference between don’t having a chance to prevent the use and making it easy.
- impossiblefork 2y agoNo, I don't think it is really expensive in terms of hardware. It's probably only a hundred million dollars for renting computing resources. The problem rather, is that there are actually some difficulties with training very large LLMs still, and then there's data and data curation; and no one has reproduced something like O-1 (I think I know how O-1 works, but I haven't confirmed it), so I actually think it's knowledge about LLM training that is the difficulty.
- hackernewds 2y agowell well you could argue that they are supporting the use case, since they are not disallowing it as they do disallow it for a bunch of purposes such as training your own AI model our classifiers off of it
- Tier3r 2y agoThat is false equivalence, there's a class of things that should rightfully be discouraged from military use (chemical/biological weapons, land mines, phosphorous weapons) because of the significant harm/side effects they cause beyond some definition of acceptable.
- eli 2y agoAren't your examples all things that are solely of interest or use to the military?
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago[flagged]
- jmward01 2y agoThanks for pointing that out. I think this clearly shows the difference between 'allowing use' and 'supporting a use case' when it comes to bio-tech. Vaccinating a soldier is allowing use, creating a biological weapon is supporting a use case. I wouldn't want to work for a bio weapons manufacturer but working for a vaccine maker would be just fine with me even if my efforts were used by the military.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y agoLol I love how you were sincere (seemingly) and I still got negged and flagged
- fragmede 2y agoRelatedly, when I ask Llama how to make red phosphorus it tells me off. What's the military going to do with an AI that refuses to help write plans on how to invade a country or kill an enemy. Then again, maybe its military masters are better at threatening it than I and can jailbreak it more easily.
- DrillShopper 2y ago[flagged]
- largbae 2y agoHN has a multinational audience, but for those in the US, do you really want our best and brightest to shun defense while other nations' best and brightest double down? If so, what is the outcome that you would like to see from that policy?
- marricks 2y agoThat’s because it’s not actually defense it’s offense and since we’re the worlds sole super power it’s extremely coercive offense.
- speakfreely 2y agoYour perspective is about 15-20 years out of date, maybe valid in the 1990s or early 2000s. The US is extremely vulnerable both economically and militarily to the "New Axis" (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea). China alone could easily out-manufacture its way to a victory in a conventional war with the US. The US, for all its faults, was a stabilizing force that permitted free markets to flourish in a unipolar world. It is quickly becoming a multipolar world where nationalist industrial policy will decide the future winners. Whatever your thoughts on US policy, I guarantee you'll enjoy China's or Russia's even less.
- rf15 2y ago"a unipolar world" that benefits you is a good thing, I get it. But that kind of thinking is the reason why the US isn't very popular on the world stage, even with its allies. Most of them would backstab the US if they could afford it. Thankfully, politics is a coward's game, keeping everyone a little bit more alive unless your ambitions are absurdly grand.
- Gud 2y agoThe US is not very popular anymore because it kept abusing it's unique position as the #1 military power, starting wars it had no business starting, not because it is(was?) #1 as you are suggesting.
- croes 2y agoNice try. Unless the military uses potato guns, potatoes aren’t directly involved in killing decisions. AI is. At first at target selection. Just don’t hope that humans will check the results. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42017085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42017085
- chii 2y agoso how far does the indirection have to be for you to find that it isn't "involved"? Potatoes feed the soldiers, their commanders and their commanders, all the way to the top.
- croes 2y agoAs soon as the potato could make you think someone is a killing target. Take something like this but for kill decisions https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/09/a-courts-reporter-wrote-about-a-few-trials-then-an-ai-decided-he-was-actually-the-culprit/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/09/a-courts-reporter-wrote-ab...
- victorbjorklund 2y agoSo you think it is wrong to allow the military to use processors in their computers used in the weapons?
- DrillShopper 2y agoCan you explain how you get that reading from the parent comment?
- phplovesong 2y agoSo, do you think countries like russia, iran and china WONT use AI for their military? That train has gone, and its too late now. The US needs (and 110% will) do the exact same, and most likely have been doing so for the last decade.