So the author goes, "wait, this actually causes more evil than good, I will not work on it any longer", and the other guy goes "don't worry, I will keep doing the evil for you!"
Sigh.
Sigh.
Also consider that object detection has a lot of impact in positive ways as well. It doesn't seem so black and white.
I'm curious if this is something that some sort of modified license could help resolve. Do I have the option to license my software so that it can't be used in war?
Licenses are not a viable solution to this sort of ethical quandry.
"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not...
I'm a researcher working on a system for monitoring offshore kelp farms for renewable aquaculture with an autonomous underwater vehicle. I can't use GPS underwater, Dopper velocity logs and sensitive inertial navigation systems are either too expensive and/or export-controlled, and doing manual filtering of visual data is tricky and inconsistent. Adding good object detection for kelp to helps to make that kind of system much more reliable, which can help provide useful metrics to groups working on creating new biofuel sources and marine ecosystem monitoring. I think that's valuable work, and it's enabled by YOLO.
Joe Redmon has paid attention to where and how his work is being used, and I respect him for disengaging with something that he finds not to line up with his values. But it's worth pointing out that there are people (not just me) who are using that work in ways that might be worthwhile.
Your work seems worthy of an AMA if you ever have the time.
For example, the robotics end is currently a human-piloted ROV with data getting obtained in post-processing on dozens of fronds, rather than an AUV doing real-time inference (hopefully to be solved by YOLO) on thousands. However, I recently heard about some tentative plans for a more in-depth pilot-scale effort in Spring/Summer 2021, by which time we'll hopefully have some more interesting results to talk about!
[1] https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=slick-sheet-project/scalable-aq...
Or do you sigh only because in this instance you agree with the original author, but you don't actually think it should be a rule that others are constrained by the moral thoughts of their predecessors?
I know of a promising treatment for types of hypothyroidism, but the original discoverer doesn't want to continue work on it because she doesn't agree with animal testing.
If my moral calculus says that the quality of life of millions of humans is more important than the quality of lives of thousands of rats and dogs, am I not allowed to pick up where she left off?