Comment by cmontella | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmontella | Hacker News Reader

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As a roboticist at the beginning of my career working on drones, I decided then and there that I would never make "bombs", a metaphor I used to mean anything that could be weaponized. I realized a lot of the work I was doing was funded by DARPA, and I was very cognizant about my research being used in this way. And like Dr. Kearns suggests, it's not entirely black and white. Would my path planning algorithm be used to more efficiently deliver scientific payloads to the atmosphere, or would it be used to route missiles to maximize casualties? Hard to really say, but I've avoided overtly military applications (even things like BigDog, designed to carry equipment for troops).

Sometimes the distinction is even more insidious. I did work on perpetual flight for drones, and Facebook had a perpetual flight project that had the goal of bringing internet access to remote locations in Africa. Sounds humanitarian, but I also didn't want to be responsible for subjecting poor Africans to what I consider Facebook's panopticon. Or maybe it would have been a net boon for the region? It's really hard to tell a priori, so the best I have managed for myself is just to try and stay in theory, where developments are further removed from direct consequence.

As an engineer, founder, and investor I'll note that there's an ethical mandate for investors as well; when I started drone.vc I committed as a Quaker to not investing in "offensive" technologies.

Separately, RE: bringing internet to new places, there's reasonable evidence to show that introducing broadband lifts GDP[1], so whatever you may think of Facebook, giving people high-speed connectivity to the whole Internet is probably a net positive. Disclaimer: I helped start Facebook's Connectivity Lab but no longer work there.

[1] http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/391452529895999/WDR16-BP-Exp...

Most people on this site have not trusted FB's intentions with the drone project for good reason. Ever since we collectively realized a three years ago that FB's internet.org was a wolf in sheep's clothing, most people on here have been distrusting of FB.

Please note that there's a sharp distinction between bringing the Internet to new places and bringing "the Internet" aka Facebook's walled garden to new places.

From a wikipedia section on Free Basics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Basics#User_experience_re...

> In 2015, researchers evaluating how Facebook Zero shapes information and communication technologies (ICT) usage in the developing world found that 11% of Indonesians who said they used Facebook also said they did not use the Internet. 65% of Nigerians, and 61% of Indonesians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet" compared with only 5% in the US

Had the exact same predicament. Struggled with it morally, until I was exclusively working on offensive technologies ("cleanly isolating and neutralizing targets via unmanned air vehicles, out of line of sight with no gps"). That's when I quit and got some of my morality back by joining a quant firm that makes money off of other people purely for the purpose of making money and nothing else.

No wonder I have such an alcohol problem...

Almost any technology can be weaponized. It's not about the particular technology you work on, but who it's being built for and the intended application.

please help me understand how a substance that turns sand into soil, developed to green the deserts, can be used as a weapon.

To me this argument that "anything can be used in evil ways" is a poor excuse used to distract from the issue.

You're asking how fertilizer can be weaponized?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing

I don't think he is

Not OP, but a fertilizer is a reasonable embodiment of something that turns desert soil into something in which plants can grow

Turning sand in to grass - this sounds like a great thing doesn't it?

It's for golf courses - there are amazing golf courses in dubai that required genetically modified burmuda grass in a sandy synthetic fertilized substrate. They take huge leaf blowers and cover football fields worth of sand with it, water the HELL out of it, and pretty soon, beautiful grass in the desert.

Grass in the desert is great for everyone, that wants to golf or make money off golfers.

Getting grass where it isn't sustainable is not benevolent.

Not exactly what I was talking about. And yet I fail to see how a Golf Course is a weapon. Waste of resources, yes. Unsustainable, yes. But weapon?

Actually I was talking about this: http://www.naturalbuildingblog.com/sand-soil-7-hrs-biggest-s...

Regarding the original statement I was criticizing: Of course one can construct an argument of technology itself not having an ethical bias and the notion that everything can be used as a weapon. Sure, beat someone to death with flowers, go on!

The point I'm trying to make is that I consider this tactic a distraction. Nothing more than look! a three headed monkey behind you!

Depends on whether you see this 'greening the desert' as destructive to the environment or not I suppose.

And then perhaps there's a question of who owns this now greened and more usable desert?...

Reminds me of Frank Herbert's "Dune", where the greening of the desert was viewed as ecological destruction (and more), as it destroyed the habitat of the worms.

Just because you can't see the destructive nature of a technology does not mean it doesn't have one. Sometimes it's a matter of perspective and context.

When gunpowder was invented the purpose was medicinal, three centuries later we had cannons.

Many things in our world seem positive on the onset, but give it some time and start looking from different angles and you're bound to find some potentially detrimental use.

Granted some inventions like nuclear energy and nitroglycerin, both intended for constructive purposes, have a more obvious destructive potential. An example that better connects with your question is a company such as Monsanto.

It somehow makes sand vulnerable to microorganisms? Great, but what would that do to cement bridges and dams?

Here's a thought, what if you can get the same substance to work on the sand part of concrete?? It assumes more research and work, but the argument has a kernel of truth.. I don't sure I agree with using that to not think about the ethics of what you do, but nevertheless.

If that technology is controlled by a government, it could be denied to whomever they decide is "undesireable"...

I can't find a reference but there was a story about a drummer or bugler or something in an army, and when his side was defeated the opposing prince was about to kill him, and he said "No, I have done you no harm! I never bore weapons against you, I only played my instrument so my friends would be encouraged."

And the prince said "by aiding them you killed my men" and slew the man.

And then the prince also killed the blacksmiths, because they made swords, and the farmers because their crops had fed the army, and cobbler because they made boots that people in the army wore, and the lumberjacks because their trees were used to construct siege engine, and the cattle herders because their oxen had been used to pull the army supply wagons, and the printers because their printing presses had been used to encourage the army, and the weavers because their cloth and clothed the army, and the tailors, because they had sewed clothes for the army, and the dye makers because their dye had colored the flags and uniforms of the army, and the tanners because their leather had been used to make the saddles for the cavalry, and the merchants because their money and taxes and paid for the state to have the army.

And then the people in the next town all got together and said, "Let us all work together and see that this prince is never able to defeat our army."

To badly misquote Richlieu,

"Give me six ideas from the most ethical of engineers, and I'll find something in them to weaponize."

Any primary research can be used for any range of good or evil... the task is to curtail the creators of evil uses.

You can't imagine any way terraforming sand dunes on mass scale might do damage to nearby countries? It would be akin to diverting a river upstream which was an act of war historically.

Ah man, as a former straight leg grunt (meaning no plane, usually no helo or even a truck, we walk _everywhere_) anything that can take weight off is an absolute God send. We aren't blood thirsty but you would be saving a ton of knees, backs, frustration, and pain all around.

Yeah, no doubt that tech will help you. But the line from a robot carrying your guns to a robot wielding your guns is a little too direct for me.to work on personally. It's not that I think you are bloodthirsty. I think the people you work for are.

If all the engineers who have a sense of ethic refuse to work for military projects, it implies that military projects will be performed by less ethical than average people. It is frightening. IMHO, avoiding military projects because of ethic is counterproductive.

Damned if we do and damned if we don't?

You can talk yourself into working on anything at all with this rationalization.

Yes, even if you are completely against something. For example, if you are against GMO and work on this subject, you may give valuable insights (outside of NDA) to other GMO opponents to help their fight to stop GMO. Of course, you risk your job.

"Hey, somebody's gotta help kill all these people, might as well be me--wouldn't want it to be a bad guy!"

Richard Gatling thought his most famous invention would cause wars to be shorter and less brutal. More deaths faster would mean faster surrenders, he thought. He is a weapons inventor who thought he was doing something ethical.

Instead, he made war and death cheaper. He made it more likely. In his lifetime, machine guns were deployed asymmetrically, making it cheaper for colonial empires to kill large numbers of the colonized.

Alfred Nobel thought so too with dynamite.

"Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops."

It appears this is repeating trope- these inventors of highly effective killing machines did not consider that the increased rate of killing would be matched by an increase in mobilizing cannon-fodder.

Some genius in the near-future will probably make the same inaccurate prediction about autonomous killerbots, or more likely realistically, cyber-warfare (I hate that term): "Shutting down hospitals, power plants and other critical infrastructure will make wars shorter"

This is essentially the argument for targetting the Iranian nuclear program with stuxnet.

Isn't that what is kinda happening with nuclear weapons though? I would argue we have less armed conflict nowadays exactly for the reasoning in that quote. Dynamite did not really allow for two army corps to mutually annihilate each other in a second, nuclear weapons actually do.

Nuclear weapons didn't stop wars, and they didn't stop major powers from fighting each other. It just moved to proxy wars. Proxy wars have been common for a long time. Maybe they've stopped world wars, but maybe the two World Wars were exceptions and not a guaranteed feature. I don't know how to quantify whether there are greater or fewer armed conflicts between states since the invention of nuclear weapons.

You are not going to change the military from the inside anymore than Snowden could change the NSA from the inside.

Thinking you can is naive at best.

Snowden was inside and his actions have an impact on NSA. I hope these kinds of organisations will understand that if they want to avoid similar whistleblowers, they need to have a better management that listen to their "halflings".

Snowden didn't change anything from the inside. He tried and failed before realising a public-interest leak was the only way.

Perhaps we need a license that excludes use of a technology for certain purposes (?)

Like the patent licensing terms for using AES-OCB?

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