
Google Is Quietly Providing AI Technology for Drone Strike Targeting Project - seagullz
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/06/google-is-quietly-providing-ai-technology-for-drone-strike-targeting-project/
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joshribakoff
So basically this is like the movie "The Terminator" except a human operator
has to hit "yes" on an "are you sure" dialog. Let's hope that google has
better confirmation dialogs than the Hawaii emergency alert system has.

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throwaway84742
This will go over well on Memegen for sure.

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ocdtrekkie
Does it matter though? If someone's complaining about it on Memegen, it still
means they're being paid to help Google profit. This may be Google's "IBM
helping the Nazis target Jews" moment, the ethical engineer cannot work there.

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throwaway84742
You know, there’s this recent tendency to call people Nazis for no reason that
I really dislike. Fact is, you don’t know the details of what they have signed
up to do, and therefore you can’t make a determination as to the moral
standing of all this. For all we know this could very well reduce the overall
number of casualties by e.g. spotting IEDs, or letting soldiers avoid areas
with high concentration of insurgents if fighting would detract from the main
mission. Instead we get histrionics and “killing Jews” comments. I get it,
it’s a “woke” thing to do. But there’s a “crying wolf” component to it that
one needs to bear in mind as well. There might come time when you’d actually
want people to pay attention to you.

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ocdtrekkie
Oh, I am not one to throw this around lightly, and I agree with your general
view on people who do. Unfortunately, in the world we live in today, it's hard
to differentiate worthy examples with meaningless flotsam. Perhaps a better
analogy would be the development of the atomic bomb. We now have engineers
doing engineering for engineering's sake, developing something that will
almost certainly be used to kill thousands of people (or more).

And it doesn't matter what Google thinks it will use it for, or what Google
wants it to be used for. Our government wants drones that can assassinate
people better with dubious or nonexistent evidence of their crimes. If you
give them the technology to do it better, they will use it, even if you didn't
intend it.

Fundamentally, Hillary Clinton's complicity in our drone program ended up
being the primary reason I couldn't bring myself to cast a vote for her (I
didn't vote Trump either, mind you).

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throwaway84742
One thing you’re missing once again is that the development of nukes has so
far been a net positive. MAD pretty much excludes the possibility that major
powers will ever be at war with each other again. Potentially hundreds of
millions of people got to live their lives in full rather than be mowed down
by conventional weapons in an all out war of attrition.

