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Good, this idea that all weapons are evil is an insane luxury belief.

• ckrapu 2y ago
  There is a wide range of moral and practical opinions between the statement “all weapons are evil” and “global corporations ought not to develop autonomous weapons”.
  • CamperBob2 2y ago
    Tell Putin. He will entertain no such inhibitions.
    • ignoramous 2y ago
      > no such inhibitions Propping up evil figure/regime/ideology (Bolsheviks/Communists) to justify remorseless evilness (Concentration camps/Nuclear bomb) isn't new nor unique, but particularly predictable.
      • CamperBob2 2y ago
        Sadly, attempts at equating evil figures/regimes/ideologies with those who fight back against them are equally predictable.
      • gosub100 2y ago
        nukes saved countless US lives being lost to a regime who brought us into it. And it's incalculable how many wars they have prevented.
    • vkou 2y ago
      We have Putin at home, he spent the past weekend making populist noises about annexing his neighbours over bullshit pretenses. I'm sure this sounds like a big nothingburger from the perspective of, you know, people he isn't threatening. How can you excuse that behaviour? How can you think someone like that can be trusted with any weapons? How naive and morally bankrupt do you have to be to build a gun for that kind of person, and think that it won't be used irresponsibly?
      • tmnvdb 2y ago
        I understand the sentiment but the logical conclusion of that argument is that the US should disarm and cease existing.
        • vkou 2y ago
          The better logical conclusion of that argument is that the US needs to remove him, and replace him with someone who isn't threatening innocent people. That it won't is a mixture of cowardice, cynical opportunism, and complicity with unprovoked aggression. In which case, I posit that yes, if you're fine with threatening or inflicting violence on innocent people, you don't have a moral right to 'self-defense'. It makes you a predator, and arming a predator is a mistake. You lose any moral ground you have when you are an unprovoked aggressor.
          • pixl97 2y ago
            Ya go poke people with nukes and see how that works out
            • vkou 2y ago
              You are making an excellent argument for nuclear proliferation.
          • tmnvdb 2y ago
            I'm not a fan of Trump but I also feel he has not been so bad that I think that surrendering the world order to Russia and China is a rational action that minimizes suffering. That seems be an argument that is more about signalling that you really dislike Trump than about a rational consideration of all options available to us.
            • vkou 2y ago
              It's not a shallow, dismissable, just-your-opinion-maaan 'dislike' to observe that he is being an aggressor. Just like it's not a 'dislike' to observe that Putin is being one. There are more options than arming an aggressor and capitulating to foreign powers. It's a false dichotomy to suggest it.
  • vasco 2y ago
    Palantir exists, this would just be competition. It's not like Google is the only company capable of creating autonomous weapons so if they abstain the world is saved. They just want a piece of the pie. The problem is the pie comes with dead babies, but if you forget that part it's alright.
    • astrange 2y ago
      Palantir doesn't make autonomous weapons, they sell SQL queries and have an evil-sounding name because it recruits juniors who think the name is cool. Might be thinking of Anduril.
      • trhway 2y ago
        Palantir provides combat management system in Ukraine. That system collect and analyzes intelligence, including drone video streams, and identifies targets. Right now people are still in the loop though that is naturally would go away in the near future I think.
      • cookiengineer 2y ago
        Palantir literally developed Lavender that has been used for autonomous targeting in the bombardments of the Gaza stripe. Look it up.
        • pbiggar 2y ago
          https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
    • tmnvdb 2y ago
      With or without autonomous weapons, war is always a sordid business with 'dead babies', this is not in itself a fact that tells us what weapons systems to develop.
      • darth_avocado 2y ago
  • cortesoft 2y ago
    Who should develop autonomous weapons?
    • IIAOPSW 2y ago
      Who should develop biological weapons? Chemical weapons? Nuclear weapons? Ideally no one, and if the cost / expertise is so niche that only a handful of sophisticated actors could possibly actually do it, then in fact (by way of enforceable treaty) no one.
      • aydyn 2y ago
        So in other words, cede military superiority to your enemies? Come on you already know the rational solution to prisoner's dilemma, MAD, etc. > enforceable treaty How would you enforce it after you get nuked?
        • lmm 2y ago
          > in other words, cede military superiority to your enemies? We're talking about making war slightly more expensive for yourself to preserve the things that matter, which is a trade-off that we make all the time. Even in war you don't have to race for the bottom for every marginal fraction-of-a-percent edge. We've managed to e.g. ban antipersonnel landmines, this is an extremely similar case. > How would you enforce it after you get nuked? And yet we've somehow managed to avoid getting into nuclear wars.
          • pixl97 2y ago
            Because after proliferation the cost would be too great and nukes other than wiping cities aren't that useful AI on the other hand seems to be very multi purpose
          • Sabinus 2y ago
            Resusal to make or use AI-enabled weapons is not "making war slightly expensive for yourself", it's like giving up on the Manhattan project because the product is dangerous. Feels good but will lead to disaster in the long run.
• ziddoap 2y ago
  >all weapons are evil That wasn't the quote that was removed. Not even close, really.
  • astrange 2y ago
    It's definitely an opinion Google employees had in the last decade. Actually I think a lot of people have it - just yesterday I saw someone on reddit claim Google was evil because it was secretly founded by the US military. And they were American. That's their military!
    • jjj123 2y ago
      It’s my military too and I believe the US military does many, many evil things that I want no part of.
      • dark_glass 2y ago
        "We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us"
        • switchbak 2y ago
          And these same organizations fuel conflicts that actively make the USA less safe. These organizations can both do great things (hostage rescues) and terrible things (initiating coups), and it’s upon the citizenry to ensure that these forces are put to use only where justified. That is to say almost never.
          • astrange 2y ago
            We've stopped South American coups more recently than we've initiated them. (in the last few years, in Brazil and Bolivia)
            • switchbak 2y ago
• ignoramous 2y ago
  > all weapons are evil is an insane luxury belief It isn't this that's insane, but a total belief purity of weapons that is.
  • psunavy03 2y ago
    You don't have to have a "total believe in the purity of weapons" to recognize that military tech is a regrettable but necessary thing for a nation to pursue.
    • ignoramous 2y ago
      > You don't have to have "total belief in the purity of weapons"... Of course. My point was, it is insane for those who do.
• darth_avocado 2y ago
  Weapons inherently aren’t evil, which is why everyone has kitchen knives. People use weapons to do evil. The problem with building AI weapons is that eventually it will be in the hands of people who are morally bankrupt and therefore will use them to do evil.
  • Dalewyn 2y ago
    Much as it is the case with guns, why is the "problem" the tools or provider of the tools and not the user of the tools?
    • pixl97 2y ago
      Depends if next years gun gets up and shoots you in the head on its own accord.
  • pyinstallwoes 2y ago
    “…so which is it then? Is it really robots that are wired to kill people, or the humans wiring them?”
  • psunavy03 2y ago
    Then we should be encouraging their development by the governments of liberal democratic nations as opposed to authoritarian regimes.
    • burningChrome 2y ago
      Serious question. How would we go about doing that? Every kind of nefarious way to keep the truth at bay in authoritarian regimes is always on the table. From the cracking of iPhones to track journalists covering these regimes, to snooping on email, to using AI to do this? Is just all the same thing, just updated and improved tools. Just like Kevin Mitnick selling zero day exploits to the highest bidder, I have a hard time seeing how these get developed and somehow stay out of reach of the regimes you speak of.
  • gerdesj 2y ago
• aprilthird2021 2y ago
  It's a luxury belief to think you won't one day be scanned by an AI to determine if you're killable or not
• bbqfog 2y ago
  The US is not under any kind of credible threat and in fact is the aggressor across the globe and perpetrator of crimes against humanity at scale. This is not a recent phenomena and has been going on as long as this country has existed.
  • tmnvdb 2y ago
    The US mainland is not currently under threat but the US world system is.
    • bbqfog 2y ago
      That's absolutely no reason to attack anyone.
• captainbland 2y ago
  Whatever your feelings on that are, it's hardly unreasonable to have misgivings about your search and YouTube watches going to fund sloppy AI weapons programmes that probably won't even kill the right people.
• siltcakes 2y ago
  Do you see nothing wrong with the same company that makes YouTube Kids making killer AI? I think creating weapons is often evil. I think companies that have consumer brands should never make weapons, at the very least it's white washing what's really going on. At worst, they can leverage their media properties for propaganda purposes, spy on your Gmail and Maps usage and act as a vector for the most nefarious cyber terrorism imaginable.
  • greenavocado 2y ago
    The same company that brings you cute cartoons for kids might also develop technologies with military applications, but that doesn't make them inherently "evil." It just makes them a microcosm of humanity's duality: the same species that created the Mona Lisa also invented napalm. Should companies with consumer brands never make weapons? Sure, and while we're at it, let's ban knives because they can be used for both chopping vegetables and stabbing people. The issue isn't the technology itself. It's how it's regulated, controlled, and used. And as for cyber terrorism? That's a problem with bad actors, not with the tools themselves. So, by all means, keep pointing out the hypocrisy of a company that makes YouTube Kids and killer AI. Just don't pretend like you're not benefiting from the same duality every time you use a smartphone or the internet which don't forget is a technology born, ironically, from military research.
  • jcgrillo 2y ago
    It sounds like they're distracted, tbh. It's hard to imagine how a company that specializes in getting children addicted to unboxing videos can possibly be good at killing people.. oh, wait, maybe not after all..
• sangnoir 2y ago
  It's not a luxury belief for a multinational tech company that intends to remain in business in countries that are not allied to the US. Being seen as independent of the military has a dollar value, but that may be smaller than value of defense contracts Google hopes to get.
• PessimalDecimal 2y ago
  You're either misdirecting the discussion, or have missed the point. The statement isn't about weapons, but the means of _control_ of weapons. It's legitimate to worry about scaled, automated control of weapons, since it could allow a very small number of people to harm a much larger number of people. That removes one of our best checks we have against the misuse of weaponry. If you have to muster a whole army to go kill a bunch of people, they can collectively revolt. (It's not always _easy_ but it's possible.) Automating weapons is a lot like nuclear weapons in some ways. Once the hard parts are done (refining raw oar), the ability for a small number of people to harm a vast number of others is serious. People are right to worry about it.