Google should stop hiring activists and start hiring pragmatists.
I mean who's stopping China from using AI powered military robots? they should think about the bigger picture.
Also I think they should invoke AI powered military robots in recruiting, what's cooler than that?!
Rather say that he's apolitical
Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department, says says Werner von Braun"
I'd argue the more skilled and, well, rich, you become, the less national borders really matter. Unless you're patriotic, I guess.
>What's cooler than that
Speak for yourself! I would find that disgusting. A given company's culture doesn't have to appeal to everyone, it wouldn't be much of a culture if it did.
That is literally the application of drone technology right now. The application of AI in drones is going to be used in a proxy/civil war in a poor country because one of the US's allies is composed of religious freaks. That's it. So unless you want to be complicit in killing innocent people because people in this country like cheap oil, hopefully you won't see this as very cool: http://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-sile... (although this wasn't technically part of the civil war, it's still a highly relevant example)
When I was running a robot company, I made the decision to not do military projects (mostly for personal reasons) and it helped me hire some great people that I couldn't have otherwise.
Ive been around the block a few times, I've worked in the defense industry myself and I've worked in non-defense private sector as well. The quality and quantity of engineers are extremely similar in my experience.
Don't forget, a lot of the tech we use everyday started as military projects, such as the Internet and GPS. Even Siri has its roots as part of a DARPA project. You really think the engineers involved in those technologies are second tier?
Anyways, is working on software to, for example, improve the day-to-day tasks of soliders and marines really morally inferior to selling people's private data to advertisers? - Most military projects do not involve tactical systems. Let's be honest here, building the "Uber of salads" doesn't change the world.
The out of touch hubis displayed in the GP comment is pretty infuriating.
Its uncontroversial to state that the US military has committed war crimes and engaged in military campaigns across the world in spite of international law. Google is working the military to expand the capabilities to carry out these attacks and to work on these projects is to either agree ideologically that the U.S. military should have these capabilities or to turn a blind eye to its uses for a cushy salary and a chance to play with state of the art toys for your day job. Between the two, the later is far more palatable to me so I feel I'm being quite generous by labeling it as greed.
I don't disagree with this. The question I'm trying to figure out -- which powerful nation should we look to for an example on how to do better?
Also, are there are any benefits to the U.S. maintaining hegemony as the top military power that we need to weigh in this analysis?
I definitely am not fully up to speed on the details of this debate, but it does appear fairly complex at first glance.
Even if the US is a net positive I believe that almost none of the campaigns it has engaged in the last 20 years have done anything to contribute to that. I can't abide by that and would urge anyone with a conscience to do the same.
If your goal in not working on them is to bring about political or social change as a result, then you are, by definition, an activist.
If not, no :)
(though i admit different dictionaries seem to have fairly different definitions here)
Why go down this path at all? Google doesn't need to be a war contractor (I think "defense contractor" is a misnomer these days - we all know what this tech is used for: bloody violent and usually unfair/illegal war).
Google should avoid becoming a sponsor of death in the world. What happened to "changing the world" (for the better, I assume)? Is feeding the American war machine changing the world for the better? Really?
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdD9uSrNFT4
https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/
It is commendable that employees with moral fibre at google are saying no to the industrial war machine, that feeds on global conflict.
And there is no apriori reason as to argue that military funding is the only way to do ground breaking research. Ironic that some in the political spectrum who generally defend the military also feverently view goverment spending as inefficient to markets.
Google hasn't been doing that, ever. That's really the point of the story - the agency of the people who work at Google.