Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
You just can't abstract yourself away from ethical decisions ad infinitum. The level of self-deception needed to convince oneself that this, or whatever US military tech for that matter, would only be used for defensive purposes is mind-boggling to me.
This thing Google helps with, parsing and scanning through drone visual feeds, typically ends up on the latter end of the scale.
Sure, it could be used for parsing feeds from drones monitoring the US borders to Canada/Mexico, or cattle or whatever, but that's not the case here.
It’s not as simple as I’m against droning—that’s going to continue so long as the electorate demands minimized losses on our side (a very good argument, one leftists leveraged to try to get the US to disengage from previous wars), droning and it’s capabilities will continue.
We have more than the two choices you present. We could add more people to the task instead of using machines.
We can redefine what "enemy" means such that anyone who dies in a target area is an "enemy" - poof! no incidental collateral deaths.
We can allow, say, the objections of the crew of the AC-130 to override possibly illegal orders which result in targeting hospitals.
There are a great many things we can do; enough to suggest that what you propose as the goal to consider likely isn't an important US goal.
It seems to me the "Military is Bad" idea goes back to 60's and is more about "the status quo U.S. foreign interference system is bad" than the myopic "the Military is Bad in principle" you seem to suggest. People mostly know it is important to have a military. But that does not mean supporting all its current activities.
> "Preventing the US military from using that technology doesn't stop China or Russia from upgrading their systems to use it."
I think the general opposition to drones killing people is directed at all countries, not just the U.S.A., so your response is no argument.
The history of technology and military also shows that Russia and China creating new dangerous ways of killing and destruction is closely linked to U.S. technology lead. One can go as far as say that the faster the U.S. develops it, the faster the Russians and Chinese will have it.
The only working way to prevent those technologies from being used on people is to desist developing them, guard the existing ones and agree on not using them - treaties, like for nukes, bioweapons, etc.
You may be right, but that's an issue with the white house administration and those telling the military what to do, not with the military itself. It has always seemed to me that if you never liked what the military was doing, it was a political disgreement, not an issue with the military itself.
> I think the general opposition to drones killing people is directed at all countries, not just the U.S.A., so your response is no argument.
> The history of technology and military also shows that Russia and China creating new dangerous ways of killing and destruction is closely linked to U.S. technology lead.
It seems to me that wanting military superiority (or equality in some cases) is enough of a reason to pursue new weapon systems, and that will happen regardless of whether or not the US has the technology.
Einstein sent a letter to the US president in 1939, and then two more in 1940 to warn the US of upcoming technological advances and urged the US to start a nuclear weapons program. I mention this, because we developed nuclear weapons out of fear that someone else would do it, and we needed a deterrent. And that was obvious to people like Einstein.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_...
> The only working way to prevent those technologies from being used on people is to desist developing them, guard the existing ones and agree on not using them - treaties, like for nukes, bioweapons, etc.
That was a good approach 30 years ago, when we were fighting nation states. Now we're fighting large terrorist organizations that exist without a geographical border -- the types of people that would never sign a treaty.
True, but this doesn't require AI drones. To me that is just well crafted propaganda to make people (voters) accept further military expenses. Name one terrorist attack anywhere in the world in the last 20 years, therefore including 9/11, that could have been stopped by a swarm of AI drones (1). Today terrorism can be fought only with intelligence ops and cooperation between nations; we're talking about people either using AK47s and explosives just like 30 years ago, or driving vans to hit pedestrians. There's no war declaration in advance, therefore there's no identifiable enemy until the precise moment they hit. In this scenario you can't stop their action no matter the weapons at your disposal, not even alien technology, death rays, sharks with friggin lasers on their back or the Millennium Falcon itself. Enemies like those can be fought in one way: knowing them, foreseeing their moves and possibly infiltrating them, all actions involving intelligence, not weapons; with the right approach we don't need anything more advanced than what was available decades ago to fight them. But of course this reasoning doesn't help the weapon industry, so their puppets are instructed to brainwash people into thinking we need ultra advanced technologies when it's utter bullshit created to protect the weapons business.
(1) Actually the 9/11 attacks outcome could have been reduced by using AI drones, if they existed back then. Let's say the control tower operators realized a terrorist attack was in act on a number of planes and they knew the terrorists were going to crash some of them onto populated buildings (which is unlikely as it was unheard of before, but let's just pretend that). A swarm of AI equipped drones could have been instructed to patrol every plane literally following it so that in case of an attack each drone could down the plane to reduce the number of victims. All fine, and in this context it could work: tune the drone to the airplane transponder and let it share the plane flight plan, so that it can identify immediately if it deviates from route; if it does check with traffic control and the military and if they command so, hit the plane. What could possibly go wrong? I'm not sure I'd want these things flying over my head 24/7 or behind my plane, not even for good reasons.
You're right. They require bombs and bullets. Both have a far higher chance of collateral damage than using drones. But apparently everyone has deemed them more acceptable than possible alternatives, so we use them.
> Name one terrorist attack anywhere in the world in the last 20 years, therefore including 9/11, that could have been stopped by a swarm of AI drones.
You've given me a false choice. Namely that only defending against terrorist attacks is the only legitimate purpose. Many others probably exist too.
Last time I checked urban warfare was a fairly dicey situation for military personnel. Anything that can navigate, map, and neutralize enemy hostiles in a building, means less death rates for our soldiers.
As for me, I'm a proud military veteran. I believe a strong US military helps make the world a better and safer place. So I'd keep that job and work it as best as I could.
Different strokes for different folks. Life's too short to hate people who think differently.
I think it's completely bullshit, we need these industries.
On top of that, they've refused to cover my physical therapy, sending me a letter saying that it is their belief that I have full mobility and will not need further therapy sessions covered... while I was on crutches, in a boot. Probably a week or two after I got out of a wheelchair. Fuck you Cigna.
Fuck Cigna.
Edit: typo. “My mother is...”
We can both need industries while calling out that salespeople in that industry can be unscrupulous.
Try asking an auto agent to justify why you need $100K/$300K and collision coverage on a $5K car and listen to the endless emotional stories about people being ruined and kids killed because their auto coverage was depleted after an accident.
Him: "Think about how hard it would hurt to have to pay $30K out of pocket!!!" Me: "Honestly that would suck, but the chances of it happening are pretty small, it wouldn't ruin me, and its not worth what you are trying to charge." Him: "Well what about $300K! Don't you want to be fully protected?" Me: "What about $1M?! I can name numbers too!"
OK, maybe not that last line, but, using fear to sell someone more coverage than they objectively need is a scumbag move.
Let alone the whole with profits funds sector of the industry.
C'mon, you've never heard of any part of the insurance sector having a terrible reputation?
> According to a recent Harris Poll, health and life insurance companies are among the least-trusted companies in the US. Just 7% of the surveyed 2,250 adults told Harris they trusted their health insurance company, while 10% said the same of life insurance companies. ... The health and life insurance sectors narrowly beat out telemarketing and social media companies, with a 6% approval rating; oil companies with 4%; and tobacco companies with an abysmal 3%.
https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/a...
Social media at 6% is interesting though, does that include tech companies like Facebook?
Like any business, “dollars in” has to be greater than “dollars out” in the long term. This seems to be a controversial train of thought when it comes to insurance for some reason.
For example, from a pure dollar-in-dollar-out perspective it's in the best interest of my insurance provider for me to not visit my doctor, because it costs them money out of the payments I make them. If they create a small network of doctors who take their policy in my area, it makes it even harder for me to use their services- maybe the doctor is inordinately far from me, or constantly overbooked, or never in the office (what I'm dealing with right now). The harder you make it to access a service that your customers are paying for, the more money you make.
Insurance fraud is a career for some.
I suppose if I worked in insurance I'd want to work for the gold standard that pays out and does a good job, while aggressively sniffing out fraud.
It was a relatively small dental insurance company that had a reputation for being "for the little guy". To be honest I hadn't thought about it much before working there. But then I sat through meetings where they were actively trying to come up with strategies to get more single guys to sign up, and to keep mothers from signing up. They weren't even coy about it. All development went into signing certain people up, almost nothing went into helping people actually use it.
I blame the hospitals and the insurance companies both for the pricing arms race. I guess my big conceptual concern is how our society no longer makes anything, but just finds new ways of extracting money from each other. And besides housing market crashers and the bad actors on Wall Street (who should be in jail), I can't think of another industry that is completely built around a vague concept of money.
This will probably anger a lot of people, but it's just how I feel. I don't think everyone who works there is going to hell, it's just not something I was proud to say I was a part of. I didn't feel like I was contributing to something that was making the world better.
This is a 'flood' that caused billions worth of damage that displaced millions out of homes and covered an area that would have covered the majority of Europe under metres of 'flood' waters.
It went to court and State and Federal Governments got involved to settle the case. Not sure what happened to it.
Nothing further to add here beside to point out. Insurance companies can be fucking awfully deceptive.
The 'maven' story was published in early march, it’s an 80k employee company, that is not even a blip within their natural turnover rate.
It's a significant amount of people if all of these people are close to or part of the project being discussed. I wouldn't expect Mike from the Angular team to resign over a project he knows little about so I don't think the employee count is relevant.
The art/lie is omission and letting the reader jump to the conclusion. Currently there is nothing in the article to suggest that these aren't just call-centre workers but they (Gizmodo, pronouns pal) will let you believe that its Maven people and senior engineers.
It puts the article in to random-arse speculation mode of a pretty bad kind.
Published in 2013-2014 time frame: https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
As a second point, engineers somewhere, perhaps readers of hackernews, have built systems that enabled illegality and overreach -- and they maintain them. I understand that people want to provide for their families and futures, but at some level introspection, unfortuntely, seems to have fallen short. Taking the idea a step further, what expections should we have of our peers?
People really can help create the future through what they choose to work on.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-military-is-responsibl...
https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/the_next_silicon_va...
The artificial part is just the nature progression of such.
Disclaimer: I am a Xoogler
I think you read that wrong. Quote from the article:
"Many of them have written accounts of their decisions to leave the company, and their stories have been gathered and shared in an internal document, the contents of which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo."
If they really had ethical concerns they’d have quit long ago given all the data collected from their users —I get it advertising is their bread and butter. We’ll see how GDPR affects their behavior at home and if it means anything.
Because everyone who doesn't share your ethics must have none?
I like and support the GDPR, but that's the most intolerant statement I've read in a while on HN.
Soon enough we are going to have drone flying done the street and stopping us to scan our face. No one will bat an eye as it's for "our protection" and nothing _more_.
Make no mistake we are competing with China.
Would these Alphabet employees prefer the machine learning contracts to go to Lockheed Martin/Amazon where ethics are not a priority, or would they have rather kept the development in house?
I'd also question your bedrock assumption, that Google has much higher ethical standards than Raytheon. Why should we think this beyond "don't be evil" branding?
Individual employees have a say in how products are developed, it is not like employees must adhere to a rigid medieval orthodoxy or otherwise suffer death/decapitation/torture/rape.
The company’s recent political fumbles, like its sponsorship of the Conservative Political Action Conference and its struggle to address internal diversity concerns, have also played a role.
The company does not want to be a left leaning liberal company. It wants to be a neutral company that doesn't get punished by the winds of our two party political system. I'm sure after Trump won in 2016 a lot of higher ups at Google let out a collective sigh of relief about their 2012 decision to support the CPAC.
Calling that support a 'political fumble' is all that you need to see how biased this article is.
That is, to a certain degree, also true for Russia. Revenues for NAtural Gas and Oil are crucial for the state, they'd have to cut expenses significantly if oil prices were back at $30/bbl for more than just a few years.
How can you say that? They have more active nuclear warheads than U. S., plenty to overwhelm any current AB system. Do you count on the AB system getting better so as to eliminate MAD?
Russia and whatever jihadi wannabe idiots in HiLuxes in the middle east don't even rate. There are street gangs in the US that are more worrisome.
Not quite the iron-grip that less democratic nations had on their economies during war-time, but not what you would call a free-market economy nowadays.
The sentiment of the opposing ex-Googlers is about something different: arming post-Iraq,Afghanistan,Syria U.S. government with more weapons to do more of the same, when there is no comparable war going on.
I'd say Google has closer ties to the military industrial complex than for example Huawei does to the PLA. I not only think that Google should be banned outside of the US, but that it must be.
We too easily allow ourselves to leave it all up to Google and US companies with shady backgrounds and connections. It's why we must support the development of services like WeChat etc, so we are not fully reliant on the US. It also has the added benefit of allowing much greater focus on non-US people and languages, we're often forgotten about.