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Comment by lukev | Hacker News Reader

I've said it before and I'll say it again... any company that actually cared about AI "safety" or "alignment", or had any belief that we are on the threshold of AGI, should steadfastly refuse to let it be used in any sort of military or intelligence context.

That's literally how you get Skynet, and that's what everyone claims to be worried about, right? Or are they just full of shit

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> any company that actually cared about AI "safety" or "alignment", or had any belief that we are on the threshold of AGI, should steadfastly refuse to let it be used in any sort of military or intelligence context

Then they should promptly exit the space and go into, I don’t know, gardening.

Economics will force them to anyway. Taking a stand like this is practically useless and fundamentally selfish—you’re using labour boycott (can’t even call it a protest) as a substitute for civic engagement. And it’s naïve—AI is being pursued by multiple militaries. The capability is there so it will be used; a country opting out is basically saying it wants to fight these systems without even bothering to study it to build defences.

"someone else will do it" is not, has never been, and never will be valid moral reasoning. You are responsible for your own actions, not what someone else might do if you refuse to take actions you consider immoral.

> "someone else will do it" is not, has never been, and never will be valid moral reasoning

I’m not saying someone has to do it. I’m saying if you work on AI it’s delusional to think you can keep it from being applied militarily. If you’re opposed to military AI stop building AI. (But don’t pretend you made a difference. You’re absolving yourself. Nothing more.)

Or, hear me out... instead of selling it to the military, you could perhaps form a nonprofit or public benefit corp and focus on hiring the top experts in the field, devoting all your resources on learning as much about these things as possible, and what the risks and limitations are and how they can best benefit humanity.

Or maybe you already did that and realized there isn't a danger of AGI, and so are pivoting to a for-profit cash grab before the hype bubble bursts.

> you could perhaps form a nonprofit or public benefit corp and focus on hiring the top experts in the field, devoting all your resources on learning as much about these things as possible, and what the risks and limitations are and how they can best benefit humanity

Which technology and expertise, if you choose not to consider its military implications, will be repurposed by someone else.

If you build militarily relevant technology, it will be used militarily. Even if you pretend while you do it that it won’t. And if technology has military potential, the nature of war and global anarchy is such that it will be exploited for it. That’s just game theory. The game only changes if war, politics through violence, becomes obsolete.

> That's literally how you get Skynet, and that's what everyone claims to be worried about, right? Or are they just full of shit

It's the latter. They're full of shit both about our current approach to this being capable of becoming Skynet, and about their caring. I mean a handful of individuals might not be, but broadly, that's the state of things.

Painting it as so advanced that even the companies building it are scared has been an excellent sales technique, though.

It’ll accidentally shoot the wrong people somewhere in a foreign country, which is already government approved.

Superintelligence is not the same branch of the tech tree as drones or surveillance.

I think it is reasonable to believe humans will use all three technologies as a means to an end. I think the user you replied to was more concerned about that, from my understanding.

If you do build a superintelligence, you don't have an ASI, the ASI has you.

Why should the West intentionally sabotage itself like that?

China, Russia, and Iran are already experimenting with AI in their drones and missiles.

I'd rather we build "Skynet" before our adversaries. It's an arms race but not playing has consequences.

Everyone would need to agree in tandem to nonproliferation similar to how nukes are handled.

Edit: Do you want your sons and daughters to fight an evenly matched (or better equipped) enemy? Fuck no! Because our adversaries show no sign of stopping. I want the odds as overwhelmingly in my favor as possible.

Skynet canonically killed humans. We don’t want to build Skynet. Skynet is strategic AI gone bad.

I put Skynet in quotes for a reason. Of course we aren't building canonical Skynet.

Do you think companies in Russia, China, Iran, N Korea, etc. will abide by that?

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