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Comment by aprilthird2021 | Hacker News Reader

aprilthird2021

Come on, what do you think the ethics team at Raytheon is going to say "Hmm, our elected leaders are relying heavily on dangerously inaccurate AI to choose bombing targets and our weapons hit a girl's school as a result, let's withhold weapons from our own govt till that's resolved"?

Obviously not. The ethics team at Raytheon is not going to ever be allowed to overrule the leadership or more importantly the political leadership of this country whose support of Raytheon is fundamental to their survival

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I have literally no clue, hence I won't try to claim I know exactly what's going on there. For all we know, the ethics team at Raytheon could have stopped multiple international nuclear wars already.

no need for wild speculation, we know that Raytheon is a US Defense contractor and we know that the US targets civilians (including US citizens) abroad for extrajudicial assassinations, starts destabilizing wars without meaningful strategic objectives, supports genocide etc. These things are all extremely well documented, for those paying attention the existence of Raytheon is inherently unethical

> paying attention the existence of Raytheon is inherently unethical

Lets do assume this is true, then again, wouldn't Raytheon be the best place to actually have a ethics department, if anyone?

only if you assume that the ethics department at Raytheon has absolute power over which contracts Raytheon takes and what kinds of products it produces. which is plainly absurd.

Why would you assume that? Say they only have 10% influence, 10% influence in "maybe we don't make this sort of weapon" is better than 0%. Of course, that's not even their job description, but that's besides the point.

Y'all a bunch of doomers and gloomers.

There is no value in merely having a position with no power, that only exists to make the organization look good. Do you think a vegan is most effective at a slaughterhouse, given that they'd undermine their employers revenue if they were given a modicum of power. Google's AI ethics team was steamrolled by this reality.

The ethics department at Raytheon is focused on questions like "Is it OK to give a bribe to the president if we call it a donation to the ballroom?"

They don't have anything to do about using the products they sell. Neither does Boeing, or Lockheed, or Tesla, or SpaceX.

They make sure that they are executing contracts in a way that doesn't break the ethics of the jurisdictions they are operating in, they aren't a bunch of naive people pleading for less war.

> they aren't a bunch of naive people pleading for less war

Where is this coming from? Who claimed this?

Sorry that was meant for who you replied to, I was pointing out the difference in the application of ethics and a personal vs corporate level and that they aren't there to argue a contradictory moral opinion at the company they are there to make sure that the company can execute contracts in a way that abides by the legal ethics of where the are operating - raytheon and stopping war was just an example it applies to all companies and I think most people, myself included, have an incorrect assumption of what those departments are even there for in the first place.

Obviously so. Raytheon is a private company that has its own equities to consider: including things like public image, legal liability, etc. The idea that the USG says jump and Raytheon says how high is absurd. They make choices and even advise the USG at times.

I hate to break the news to you, but Raytheon doesn't do the targeting.

The idea to bomb that girls school may have came from Grok, but a card carrying, uniform wearing member of the US military agreed it was the thing to do.

Where was the US military ethics team? Hegseth dismissed them earlier in the year to help with 'lethality'.

(in all reality, the intelligence was old. the database said the building was a military target, so it was sorted and assigned. intelligence is old and leaky and full or errors). a mistake. a tragic mistake, but not a deliberate act.

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