The Department of Defense or the government (whoever has the contract with Google) should immediately terminate the same unless the signers of the letter are removed from any involvement with the Maven project. The defense of America depends on a modern Military. If these people want to moralize, great, but stay away from a project they dislike. Find another company. The idea that these people are irreplaceable is nonsense. Our potential military rivals have plenty of access to capable people as do Gooogle rivals in the US. It is self-defeating to have people like this working against their own country. At least they are open about their dissent. They should find work elsewhere. It is a shame the government has to depend on people like this for needed work.
6
It''s entirely possible that these "thousands of Google employees" don't really exist, that this is a false flag operation mounted by Russia or China. I wonder how many are real employees and whether any of the techies so enthusiastic about this have bothered to check.
On the other hand, If the Google employees are so opposed to assisting the American military, all the while working for a company open to hacking by China and Russia, maybe they should just skip the middleman and get jobs in China and Russia.
4
The sentiments of Google's employees are admirable but seriously disconnected from reality. As an Air Force veteran I can state with absolute assurance that the US needs the help of its best and brightest to counter the very real threats we face. I hope someone can explain to them that they need to play a role in defending the freedom that allows them to do their work and enjoy their wealth.
2
Military applications of AI is squarely on the horizon. Not just in the USA, but elsewhere.
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. For military AI, that time has arrived.
If Google personnel do not want to contribute, they may be at odds with a very dangerous future. After all, AI could be used against AI.
Great to hear this at last: concerned US citizen.
The USA killed untold numbers in the middle east and Afghanistan (a war already lost, improved drones strike or not) And since the 80', in the process of your blunders, you virtually created the taliban, Al-Queida and finally IS, and handed over Iraq to Iran after destroying this country on a whim and lies.
A people are angry they do not want to participate in this mess...
5
Look out. There is trouble in Google paradise. The natives are restless, and they are not going to have their agenda compromised any more by the money hungry executives at the top. Watch out, Zuckerberg, your social media empire is crumbling before your own eyes.
2
Yeah, let's stop all work that has to do with anything military!
Wait, the Internet was originally ARPANET, a product of ARPA that is ... a division of the US Department of Defense.
We don't need no steenking Internet anyway -- let's boycott it because of its military beginnings.
12
The internet does not kill innocent people
2
I don't understand people who divide the world into good and evil. Why those with out religion compete to show who's more holy and point out who isn't. During the mid seventies I had a job with a defence contractor. I learned not to tell anyone. It's like that working in petro-chem there's a billion motor vehicles on the road destroying the enviroment and it's all my fault.
My advice to Google employees. You landed on easy street in your present position. You don't want to get dirty in this world? You want to do good? It's a luxury most of us can't afford. So keep it to your selves and find another job to ease your conscious where you can retain your goodness.
2
Google, unlike most of DoD contractors who have to employ citizens, is a very diverse company with employees coming from all over the world. A rank and file engineer in Google doesn’t necessarily call US homeland and can not be persuaded by nationalistic arguments or those based on patriotism. They see the world through a different lens than what is presented to US public. Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil” and the way AI could be used by Pentagon looks very evil to many.
3
If we have the technology it is only a matter of time before our adversaries will develop it as well. And soon the militarization of space. It is time to stop this madness and work for peace in the world. Seems peace is not profitable.
4
Tech workers seem to finally be having their Awoke moment. I'm so relieved. I hope its not too late. Google has always been about more than free M &Ms and daycare for those who work there.
But the timing of recent revelations with Cambridge Analytics and other data breaches should make us all pause. It's no accident that the government wants to tightly regulate Silicon Valley even as a deregulates virtually all other industries: they want to hoover all the data and force Big Tech to comply. If people are uncomfortable with Big Tech in bed with the media-military-industrial complex now, think how bad it will be when they get married. With a pre-nup no less! Yes, Big Tech like Google needs more transparency with the public, but No, we don't need the Trump Administration acting like Big Daddy.
3
If the people would have spoken before the introduction of nuclear weapons, we likely would not have had to live in fear as we do today. We should work for good, to introduce a ban/treaty with all countries not to develop AI war robots.
3
A disengenuous protest - they should protest "doing less evil" through their analytic privacy violations creating "fake news," which might result in less need for drone strikes, and help return the US to rationality.
I suspect most of the people who signed this petition are fine folks, the kind of people you'd like to have for neighbors. Well-educated, well-mannered, not prone to hitting people or abusing animals.
In this age of the all-volunteer armed forces, millions of Americans have literally no idea what war-fighting is all about. Unlike the company picnic, people get killed or maimed in large numbers. Yes, really. Perhaps some petition-signers are truly unaware that drones are used to observe and engage the enemy without putting the lives of American soldiers at risk. If so, knowledge about such matters is just a few clicks away- educate yourselves.
For those who actually understand the role of drones but believe their company should play no role in making them more efficient, I say this: please join the armed services and take your place among the dead who didn't need to die because a drone could have saved them, but didn't.
Thank goodness employees working for Boeing, Lockheed, Pratt & Whitney, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Singer, Remington and many other companies did not take the position in 1941 that they were "not be in the business of war." Back then, Americans understood that when some of us are at war, ALL of us are at war.
Just because you aren't subject to the draft doesn't mean you can disconnect yourselves from those who are doing the fighting and dying for you. The least you can do is support them with the best tools we have to offer.
5
You may wish to take your blinders off, Mr. Hamilton. Other countries will develop this technology and could use it against us. Just look at the situation we have today with nuclear weapons. We could be totally wiped out with technology we developed years ago. We will not be immune.
4
Before drone strikes we landed massed troops on foreign shores to combat our enemies. A lot of our men and women died projecting and protecting our nation's values: freedom, liberty, democracy. Improved targeting of our enemies preserves those values while protecting our troops - who could be against that? Google employees who say they are against that effort have their heads in the sand.
4
Be complacently aware that there are "targeted Individuals" already in America who have done nothing and are dealing with electric harassment by fellow citizens. Drones in the hands of "people hunter" for entertainment which can seriously have implications for the hunted is on the rise. Remember they have done no criminal act they are just the "hunted" an evil pastime.
One word SKYNET aka Google.
3
IBM helped develop the systems that facilitated the roundup and transport of holocaust victims so why wouldn't Google do business with today's merchants of death? Separating the unpleasant outcomes for some others from the continuing vitality of Google the Magnificent is required to understand the importance of the work Google is doing.
1
Yes, Virginia, there are principled people amongst American workers...
5
These "techs" are exposing themselves. I read a book a long time ago called "Pippi Longstocking". Welcome to the real world "tech". Time for you to be punched in the teeth. The world is not a swirl, yet "tech" wants chaos. Awful.
1
We cannot cure the common cold but we can blow up mankind in a million different ways. What a sad pathetic commentary on our society. I believe there is intelligent life out there somewhere and they don't come to Earth for a good reason.
6
Someone needs to provide the Presidunce with some artificial intelligence--at least then, he'd have some intelligence, albeit stolen.
3
Seems there are many who haven’t checked a history book in some time. The military-industrial complex has used heinous tools on people in the name of safety.
• Hiroshima & Nagasaki
• US Army secretly conducted 239 open air germ warfare tests between 1949-1969 at DC’s Greyhound bus terminal and National Airport. Why did citizens become guinea pigs? Reportedly, the government also released germs into the NYC subway system
• CIA gave LSD to one of its own, Frank Olson (bio warfare scientist). He later jumped to his death from a NYC hotel window.
Who will be in charge of AI—the Pentagon or a “Mad Hatter?” AI is a train without brakes. The techno-nerds thought they were smarter than the rich, powerful bamboozlers.
6
....this rings of the same dilemma faced by engineers working on the atomic bomb.... and if you ask the people in Japan it didn’t work out so well...
....all i all, development of the A-bomb is an albatross around the neck of humanity....
3
Google's motto is 'do no evil'... in working with the Pentagon, has it changed to 'Do Know Evil'?
I'm not calling the Pentagon evil, but war is. War is the Pentagon's sole reason for existence.
Again I ask, why is Google helping them?
That military industrial complex just can't be checked can it? Now google belongs to it...
Google, you disappoint me, you are not the company I once thought you were. All trust in you as a corporation has died. You are no different than Microsoft, Intel, or Apple... you've sold your soul and became yet another slave to the almighty dollar.
Bye Bye Chrome, Hello Firefox my old friend... how have you been?
1
Let’s all go around putting daisies in the barrels of each other’s smartphones while we’re at it. What weapon doesn’t have a computer in it nowadays?
1
I grew up in a very decidedly pacifist house hold because both parents, as little children, were at the wrong end of Maximum Machine guns when the army of the Ottomans came though their Christian villages and exterminated just about every inhabitant. They were up on a hill herding goats and watched the massacres unfold.
And it was American relief organizations that a gave them food and shelter as orphans.
Over the decades since, I have come to understand the special value of the United States of America and how it uses its power to defend freedom.
I think Google people are just as bad as the "American First" out of touch idiots before W W II.
So here we have their employer that "does no harm" yet does harm daily by reselling everything about you, to all manner of organizations, including selling your information out to foreign powers.
And these special snowflakes are upset about helping the Pentagon protect us.
If I had may way I would conscript them and send them out in the field.
2
What freedoms of ours needed “defending” in Iraq?
1
The Military Industrial Empire !
4
If anything, drone technology greatly reduces warfare-related deaths. Just like smart bombs, it is used to aim at the target with much greater precision than other methods, like the high-altitude bombing with which we (and especially the British!) killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in WWII.
Strategically it also reduces deaths, by making it possible for the US to make war without risking American lives. I suspect it is this, the asymmetry of such warfare's costs, that disturbs these protesters. As well it might, because it make it far more likely for us to enter conflicts with little political cost.
5
Are these employees saying that there is no threat in the world to the freedom that enables them to work at Google that may need to be defended against?
Or that there are such threats, but if in the process of attacking them more innocent people are killed accidentally because of poor technology that is fine because they would rather not get their hands dirty?
3
I am so happy that in this day an age, as a technologist, I can choose for whom I apply my talent.
I have observed advertisements for talent and calls from recruiters and asked myself plainly, "What is the impact of what I am doing? Is it for good? Or evil?"
I think Google is going to run into, headfirst, people who can afford a lofty moral code, and say, "I think I'll take my talent elsewhere."
This damages Google's brand in the extreme. The Pentagon's job is to kill people. If you think they won't use Google's infrastructure in order to do so, that is simply naive. Giving the Pentagon cloud services is one thing. Allowing them to optimize killing using your technology is something else entirely.
3
Anyone who thinks the US Military is protecting us in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and elsewhere, as opposed to actively endangering us, hasn’t paid ANY attention to the reporting on the ground done by this paper and others.
Our clumsy and murderous wars of choice have destabilized entire nations, created power vacuums that jihadists and radicals exploit, and stirred up hatred from the relatives of innocents we killed that quickly morphs into blowback, both over there and here at home.
7
Hooray for the those Google employees! This kind of thing is the test as to whether Google *really* means it's "Don't be evil" slogan, or it's just empty marketing. Assurances that "we'll keep a human in the loop of autonomous weapons" are irrelevant.
Henry Lieberman
Research Scientist
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Cambridge, MA
3
I can live with the idea of conscientious objection. If you don't like weaponized drones, get yourself reassigned.
What is unforgivably arrogant though is the idea that a group of employees of a corporation should have a the final say over whether the US has the capability to conduct more accurate drone strikes. That decision belongs to us (the people) and to our elected representatives, not to them.
If you don't like it, run for Congress.
4
Google exec: “specifically scoped to be for non-offensive purposes”. Sure, in partnership with a military now offensively involved in 3 wars, two over ten years long with no end in sight, one in Syria in violation of international law, and drone attacks that violate Pakistan’s sovereign border.
Sure, anyone would believe that!
3
How about if the US issues a statement that no US forces, domestic or military , will be used to aid or defend any Google property so that no one is unduly offended?
Google is rich enough, they can raise their own snowflake army.
4
If the Google employees are so opposed to assisting the American military, all the while working for a company open to hacking by China and Russia, maybe they should just skip the middleman and get jobs in China and Russia.
3
"a culture clash between Silicon Valley and the federal government"?
REALLY? How about a "clash between humanity and respect for human life and a military-industrial complex run amok and involved in assassinations"?
"That kind of idealistic stance..."?
"IDEALISTIC" ?
Why is a stance against using technology for projects involving assassination "idealistic"?
Would the Times have labeled scientists who objected to the Peenemünde V1 and V2 projects (or even sabotaged them with bad research) as "idealistic"? Or exemplars of human decency and conscience?
5
The United States is the ONLY country in the world that was founded on moral principle. That Google employees have no sense of history only exacerbates the evil they do. AS Niall Ferguson said of Facebook, “I don’t think they have thought deeply at all about the historical significance of their predicament, and I blame Mark Zuckerberg for dropping out of Harvard before he took any of my classes.” The same goes for Google. These snowflakes are not nearly experiencing the moral dilemma of a Robert Oppenheimer. This is not about killing, it is about protecting. Making drones less accurate will not prevent drones from being used, but it will increase deaths. They are enabling the enemies of freedom just as those who undermined the Weimar Republic enabled the rise of Fascism.
3
Saying that support of the Pentagon violates Google’s “Don’t be Evil” ethos is further evidence that progressive techies are completely unmoored from reality. It also provides further validation for conservatives that the left really does hate America. I for one am ecstatic that a bastion of American technological might is supporting our national security. Googlers legitimately concerned about evil should focus less on the Pentagon than on American tech companies helping the Chinese Communist Party build a repressive surveillance state. Now that is truly evil.
Drone technology saves many more lives than it destroys. Instead of bombing an entire city block and potentially killing hundreds of innocent people, the drone targets only the terrorists.
If these Google employees want to stop supporting instruments of violence, they should get out of the smartphone business immediately. Terrorists use phones all the time to communicate with each other. Therefore all phones are evil!
Along the same lines, cars are also evil, because the US military uses cars to transport weapons. Why are Google employees not protesting against Google's heavy investments in car technology?
These employees are confusing two entirely different forms of weaponry: handguns and drones. I had thought Google hired the best and the brightest. If this was ever true, it is obviously not so now.
2
Since offense will eventually break any defense, the internet brings a permanent siege to every doorstep. Increasingly, it seems the world must choose between jobs and personal security, or the internet. Frankly, a return to dumb phones, document messengers, print newspapers written by professional journalists, and brick-and-mortar retail seems heavenly in comparison to the current state of affairs.
1
so, since they don't want to help the war effort, does that mean they'll protest against being part of the CIA (the organization that kills people and steal resources from countries) any more?
Government military use of A.I.?
After reading that, try not to envision scenes from The Terminator where "Skynet determined our fate in a micro-second".
1
The cause may be noble but who really wants to play that game. Read or watch the 'Watchbird' by Robert Sheckley and learn what will happen when AI takes control from people blinded by failure to see beyond themselves.
1
Peaceful protest is part of our DNA as Americans. All well and good. AI based weapons are coming. Whether we have them or not the Chinese will have them and probably the Russians. At that point it's their robots killing our soldiers. Is this really the outcome that these protesters want? I support their right to be wrong. I would point out to any and all of them that it's a fools position to think that Google's "unique position" means that Google employees are going to somehow be spared the results because they signed a letter. Sheesh.
1
Military Industrial Complex....spending taxpayer money on destruction and death instead of schools, healthcare, infrastructure, family support. The joke is that none of us are any safer with increased spending on improved methods of destruction. It is pure folly to continue this ridiculous spending. Leaders know it. Contractors know it. How to break this dead end cycle?
If this choice is to be undone, then it can start with the contractors like Google that refuse to be a party to this global waste of money and effort. Whether Google can revamp its growth to assure itself and us that its work is directed to valuable projects that can actually improve the human condition will require courage and vision. I wish I could count on governments to step up. Sadly, there is no courage or vision there.
3
Thank you. Leslie. One of the best posts yet.
The Internet was a product of a Defense Department entity, DARPA. The Defense Department currently uses the Internet as well. Google engineers who don't want to be tarnished by these associations should consider pursuing another line of work, like organic farming.
Uh-oh...wait a minute...what's to keep some of their organically farmed produce from ending up in military rations? Soldiers eat, don't they?
I would fully support the actions of these Google employees if Google were involved directly in the production of weapons illegal under international law, such as chemical weapons. Otherwise, they're going to have a real hard time finding work in some area that does not have defense applications.
More effective would be political action, especially to support voter turnout of those sharing their views beyond their coterie of gifted engineers. Or how about supporting legislators who would vote for and ratify a Constitutional amendment for direct election of the President?
http://www.nycbar.org/pdf/report/SFX101.pdf
“We believe...”
Spare us the cult manifesto; the second these opportunists are made an appealing offer by DARPA they will take it. These corporations don’t actually care about anything beyond the bottom-line, and their money gives them greater protection under the law than practically any individual citizen.
I believe that Mitch McConnell delivered the fatal blow to our republic, and that most of us just don’t want to accept what plenty of us can reasonably surmise beyond any real doubt.
2
3,100 signatures out of 5K, 10K, 25K?
By the way, virtually all research can be utilized by the department of Defense whether it is related to communications, resource management , manufacturing, etc.
Let's just call it quits and put a halt to civilization.
My University gave up leadership in computer manufacturing for a couple decades because the next incantation of a super-computer series (Illiac 4) was partially funded by the Defense Department.
The last thing I want is the software that self-drives me home, keeping me and pedestrians and others safe, having a connection with software that does exactly the opposite.
It does cost to be moral, but Google does not want a postmortem on an accident to be be "Yeah, sorry, in creating the Avoid-Pedestrian module we just used the Target-Opponent module and forgot to change a 1 to a -1 to flip it's behavior - won't happen again."
Focus on self-driving cars and drones that can ferry me from home to work, fly home and park, then fly back to work and pick me up. Oh yeah, can you add a module that flies to the grocery store for me and picks up what I just bought, and gets it home before the ice cream melts?
1
It would be interesting to know the break down of these 3100 signatories into US born citizens, Naturalized citizens, Permanent residents, and H1B visa holders. With the exception of H1B visa holders, all the others have pledged allegiance or inherent duty to cooperate with the needs of the Department of Defense of the US Federal Government. In addition, all corporations headquartered in the US also have an obligation to serve the needs of the Department of Defense. Life in America, and the Republic of which we are part of will be at great risk if enemy countries are ahead of us in using Artificial Intelligence in warfare. These 3100 signatories need to start their work day with pledge of allegiance!
1
Is the thought to change the Google motto from “Don’t be evil” to "Don't resist evil" or "Let evil prevail"? I think an attempt to kill only those who spread misery and death to the innocent is a worth while endeavor. What is the alternative? I mean a realistic alternative.
1
Better to have better targetting than worse targetting. And rest assured, China will develop this technology. China has 4 times America's population and plenty of intelligent people. The military balance of power will shift against the US, and the shift will be much worse and much sooner if the Pentagon program is not successful.
2
There's no contradiction, nothing wrong, in thinking that military work is necessary and important, while at the same time not wanting to participate in that work or work for a company that does.
Some of Google's employees want the company to make that choice, and I admire them for speaking up. They'll have to make some personal decisions soon, because government money is irresistible to a big public company; the money is huge, and there's no risk.
4
This is the business of war. Our country may have been started by idealists, at least in part, but our highest ideal now as a nation is simply Profit. And not much is more profitable than perpetual war. I felt a chill when I read the names of all the multi-zillion dollar companies licking their chops over the chance to chow down on the battered and struggling body of our so-called democracy. It makes me sick and it makes me sad. All those brilliant minds and hard-working go-getters with the ability to make almost anything happen ... And this is what’s happening. War without end. Imagine all that talent, skill, and energy directed toward making life better for everyone, instead of maximizing profits for a few. When will we choose that instead?
9
In the end, disarmament on one side makes sense when other parties also disarm. Otherwise, whoever has the technological advantage will tame others. Throughout human civilization, technology has been used to sharpen the tools of killings or destruction and the ones who had superior destructive power dictated terms over others. In recent years, the USA invaded Iraq on flimsy grounds, Russia annexed Crimea, Saudi Arabia bombed and battered Yemen and China made artificial islands in South China Sea; however, the weaker countries all around the world either succumbed to the bullying or preferred to stay silent.
If AI specialists can help the USA maintain technologically destructive superiority, she will acquire those services whether Google cooperates with the government or not ! Likewise, if the USA isn't on top of this new Arms Race (of AI or drones), other competitors like China, Russia or Iran would take her place, thereby undermining her status as the only super power.
The USA is, thus, constrained to enhance her AI technology.
Mahatma Gandhi had once cautioned against technology and said it was brilliant when it served us, not when it sought to 'master' us. We have unfortunately ushered in an age where technology has completely colonized us and handed us easy methods to cause destruction.
It will be nice if the world listens to the Google employees and desists from improving the destructive capacities of AI and the drones.
A universal disarmament is the only solution.
4
Let those at google sign away. Then, sign them up for active duty and have them fight our wars with bayonets and horses - with drummers and all.
6
Years ago Star Trek had an episode where a centuries old war was waged by computers. No bombs, no mess. The dead were determined and you just had to walk into a box and be obliterated.
When the scale of war is unthinkable (like a nuclear weapon exchange) it acts as a deterrent. When the scale of war is tiny and precise it is no longer unthinkable but desirable by anyone seeking to eliminate their "enemies".
10
The idea that no lethal attack will occur without human intervention is meaningless. I can already see a monitor with a handwritten note above it:
"If the AI says '90% certain', then hit Go. If it says '80-89% certain', ask your superior for a 'Go' decision. If the AI is less than 80% certain, check the value again, later."
4
It would be incredibly chancy and probably wasteful to have a weapon that strikes a target that only the weapon would identity once launched. For one thing weapons these days cost at least six figures, maybe seven figures, and they are definitely not in infinite quantity.
If AI was being used in a weapon to find a target, then it surely would need to notify a human of that fact before a strike was authorized.
2
They're opposed to improving drone strikes? But wouldn't that include helping the military not hit the wrong people?
13
Exactly. But don't expect these snowflakes to be able to think that way. They see something they don't like -- anything -- and there is no compromise. Kim Jung-un needs some programmers.
The DoD website for Project Maven cites multiple uses for technology like Google's. UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT are also working on similar technology for "object recognition" for Project Maven.
The main purpose appears to be automating the process of scanning electronic video surveillance for "important" objects. The use of human analysts can not begin to keep up with the amount of video data gathered, by drones, or other sources.
It's a "passive use" of AI technology for surveillance. It's related to other uses such as analyzing CCTV security camera data. The DoD has other AI projects aimed at "enhanced targeting". Problems such as differentiating incoming warheads from decoys, etc. This is a case where autonomous weapons may be the only way to respond (defensively) in time, to hostile fire.
Google's Deep Mind AI team is also working on multiple medical uses: interpreting X-rays, CAT scans, MRI's, etc. for diagnostic purposes. You can separate AI work into two major areas: basic technology, and application to specific domains. Neural networks have to be trained. In most cases this takes human experts to expedite the training.
Neural Nets can learn on their own, and may "discover" patterns that humans cannot, e.g. "normal activity" in a specific Afghan farm community. Where a human analyst may call for an air strike, AI may flag the activity as "non hostile".
2
The "artificial" should fit well in Washington.
The "intelligence" part? Not a chance.
6
Google would essentially be leaving the military/govt market to Microsoft if they did this. Not sure the shareholders have the same interests as the employees.
3
Companies that only strive to placate shareholders usually have unhappy workforces. Shareholders can always sell their stock if they don't like it.
5
Paulie - hate to break the news to you but the senior managers have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value - it is not a nice-to-have.
2
In fact, corporations would not exist if they had not initially convinced a group of investors that they were in it to make money. Employees do not get to treat that investment as their own. If they don't like working to make other people money, they should leave the corporate world and work for themselves. (Then those dodos may discover the truth -- that no one will part with money for goods and services unless he can obtain value for the capital he is willing to expend.)
Totally appreciate the right for Google folks to speak out, but feels a bit ironic given the Defense Department's contribution to the Internet that begat Google.
7
As it is ironic that, in order to protect innocent people from a terrorist organization, one out of five drone kills are civilian.
1
Let’s stop this madness and pull Google from the military program. Better that American pilots be shot down and killed rather than risk the life of one innocent civilian who the enemy has deliberately put in harms way. Let ISIS use AI for evil puposes. At least we can claim the moral high ground when consoling a grieving spouse. I’m sure this would have greatly relieved my mother’s suffering when she received the notice that my father’s bomber had been shot down by enemy fire. On behalf of my widowed mom and me, as a fatherless child, thank you for your idealism, which should certainly trancend the life of an American soldier.
Just curious, if any Google employees are reading this, have you ever received a vist from the miitary telling you that your father had been killed bybenemy fire on a bombing mission. Those Google employees who have received such a visit, please reply.
27
The death of a loved one during battle should be the reason to pullback from fighting rather than to build up your arsenal so as to strike back more effectively.
Having said that it's hard say whether more technology prolongs military action (by setting the bar lower) or shortens it by allowing the more efficient (reduction in time for) achievement of objectives. Both can be argued. Dammed if you do and don't etc.
Scott, Daisuke It is not "idealistic" it is humanistic.
3
While it would be wonderful to live in a world where countries do not have to invest in national defense and everyone lived in peace, we face constant threats from real adversaries. To name a few, the North Koreans are racing to perfect weapons of mass destruction and their delivery devices to strike our nation. China and Russia already have such weapons with proven delivery systems. And the jihadists, who mercilessly murdered over 3,000 innocent Americans are still lurking, seeking to do us harm. In the face of this reality, a few Googlers demands that their company, an American based concern., not perform DOD contracts are silly and childish at the least and unpatriotic at the most extreme. If they truly do not wish to work on such projects, they can resign and leave their play-land with free food, dry cleaning, nap rooms and rich stock options. Thanks to our folks in uniform, we live in a free nation and they have the right to pursue their Utopian vision elsewhere
14
What do these over privileged kids think protects the United States - fairy dust? They have a patriotic duty to assist our democratically elected government (read: your fellow citizens). If they encounter a moral objection to coding for Uncle Sam, then they can put on a uniform and hump a few miles on Parris Island like the fellow countrymen they think they are better than. There, they can take their mind off the techno-military industrial complex they abhor and focus instead on the mosquitoes.
15
You do realize that making drone strikes less accurate won't make them not happen? They'll still strike, they'll just miss. And hit someone else. And then another strike will be sent, because the mission to destroy the target isn't complete.
Making more accurate weapons is making fewer people die.
6
I work as a civilian engineer in the DoD. According to these Google employees, my job is evil and therefore I am evil. Have they ever stopped to think that the number one requirement for a society is security and protection, which is what the DoD provides? Without that, companies like Google would not exist.
11
I know you don't need to be told this, but you are not evil. You are protecting the greatest experiment in morality and virtue in human history. These employees at Google, on the other hand, are not only evil, they are, contrary to their model, willing to do evil if it keeps them from having to deal with reality. The world is a dangerous place.
It was inevitable that the military would end up using our private surveillance companies. They have more personal data than the NSA. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have personal data from all over the world. Google is the mapper - military satellite data with Google's domestic data and we can drone an enemy sitting on a toilet anywhere in the world. The comments about helping target drones as the humane thing to do instead of heavy bombardment are the measure of how far we've gone from fighting wars against an actual threat and fighting perpetual wars for economic purposes (strategy, selling weapons, control of resources) and wars of distraction. If we were fighting a defensive war with drones coming our way, or even if our armed forces were facing air attacks our wars might make sense. We fight wars of choice. We have been droning for years without counting dead civilians. If you went to a wedding and hellfire missiles hit it what would it look like to you? Terrorism. We don't care about making enemies at this point. From the Taliban to Iraq to ISIS to trashing Syria and Libya, the War on Terror is a lot like the War on Drugs in terms of destabilizing countries and creating millions of refugees. However vile, ISIS wasn't much of a threat and muslim terrorists are less of a threat than homegrown mass murderers. We shoot more of each other than terrorists kill and the violence is spreading. How could it end well?
5
Maybe reptiles do control the world. Human greed doesn’t justify everything.
2
There was a time when working to increase the security of your country was considered the noblest calling ever, Now in an age where Snowden has been canonized by a certain segment, these Google workers see themselves as standing against the hazy military industrial complex. Putin is smiling at and applauding these activists, and would hire them in a New York minute to help him do the same thing. Google can and should fire anyone who would interfere with this project.
14
This is the marriage of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. The ultimate goal of this type of A.I. technology would be to scan an individual on the ground and determine if they are carrying a gun or explosive device and then take appropriate action (i.e., kill them), a surgical strike as it were. I am glad that I am living in a country where we can have a discussion / debate about this technology. But they will proceed with it whether it is Google or some other company. Twenty to fifty years from now it will be interesting to look back on this time period.
Max Weber warned us: "That which can be done will be done."
Fifty-two years ago in freshman Western Civilization class - old fashioned, out-of-fashion history and philosophy studies.
Google's history is not "unique" and its "motto Don't Be Evil" is unanchored in the real world. Weber's warning in our Internet age is anchored in our real world. mas nix who first does that which "can" be done.
1
Sad to say greed has never been exempt from being socially acceptable. There’s an old saying in the use of human capital- “you’ve sold your soul to the company store.” You can probably Google the words to the song.
1
Pull away from the pentagon, Google. If you care at all about your corporate reputation, then you'll pull away. ASAP.
5
It has nothing to do with reputation.
Google employs scores of foreign nationals who are not concerned over American soldiers. I wonder if we need to start revoking technology visas in Silicon Valley.
4
What an arrogant unpatriotic group of employees. What if Russia and China develop this technology? We'd be at a disadvantage. I suppose they don't care as long as their vanity is assuaged.
14
We have a department of defense that should be developing this. Not Google. It is not unpatriotic for a Google employee to have reservations or flat out objections to producing a weapon that can be used to kill people. If a person wants to use his or her skills in the defense industry than they would have chosen that as a career.
11
Read the Constitution, sir. It's the only thing that distinguishes us Americans from being like Russia or China. Let's re-define arrogance.
10
That's right for academia as well. More and more research money comes from the DoD, more and more scientists go along and don't question war. Good for the google protesters!
1
As for me, the line is the dependency on remote human control. If autonomous weapons make decisions on themselves, evil leaders can easily order a city to be exterminated. If every weapons that does the final killing is operated by a human soldier, they are still in control.
War the father of all things!
2
The meaning of "AI" needs to be defined for a given context; is pattern-recognition software AI? Like any technology, how it is used reflects on the ethics of the people who use it, at least as long as people are the ones making the decisions on how it is used.
It may be a while before we can say we have created a “general AI” that is a stand-alone thinking entity with volition and agency in a similar sense as a person, but certainly that possibility lurks somewhere in the not-too-distant future. At that point, the question of the ethics of the AI “creature” itself comes to the fore.
The AIs we create will presumably operate under a set of values that their creators impart to them. Setting the Chinese aside, we have significant AI work going on in the US that is guided by the values inherent in corporations, such as "maximize return on shareholder investment."
"Alexa" in Amazon's so-called smart speakers might be seen (eventually) as an interface with an AI that is motivated to learn as much about us so it can sell us things more effectively. Do Google's AI efforts collect data about us so that it can better target advertising to influence our thinking any topic (a potential tool for propagandists)?
We can write all we want from an academic point of view about AI ethics, but the control of how these systems behave is with the entities that have the resources to build them. The motivations, values, and ethics of current AI builders are not at all reassuring.
4
All U.S. citizens have a moral obligation to help, if they have the requisite skills, keep the U.S. military the best in the world.
8
No, no they don't. American citizens have a moral obligation to help their country be the best it can be. That may or may not include aiding the US military. That may or may not include protesting the military, and refusing the military too.
The Nation and the Military are not equal, and not synonymous. The US Military serves the country, not the other way around.
26
Portolano, you are wrong. The military is a servant made up of some subclass of servants. They are a political tool employed by our elected officials.
Do you have an obligation to those who serve? I think it might be time to reinstate the draft so that more people have skin in this game.
4
But that's just it.
A significant number of Google employees aren't US citizens.
1
Google leaders sound foolish in trying to suggest that its work with the Pentagon is merely "non-offensive". The Defense Department would not be doing it's job if it acquired artificial intelligence/cloud capabilities and did not use them for defending our troops -- which usually means killing "the other guy."
The company also sounds silly when it says the technology it's providing is the same accessible to the common Google customer. You've got to ask yourself why on earth the high-flying, big-spending Pentagon would be paying for a technology already available to the rest of us.
At least someone's speaking straight. For once, it was a Pentagon officer, who as the Times reports, recently said that the overall program was "in part designed to 'increase lethality and readiness'."
With a company that obscures the truth and whose lame motto is "Don't be Evil," I think a better one would be "Speak no Evil."
2
So 3,000+ mostly H1-B visa holders don't want Google AI to be available to the Pentagon, but have no problem writing that same AI code to displace millions of workers world wide. A very warped sense of morality indeed.
11
What did we expect?
They're not Americans—how can we expect loyalty?
SkyNet is not pleased. And oh by the way, happy 50th birthday, HAL.
6
A significant portion of resources destroyed in 'security' and 'policing' could be much more effective in peaceful efforts to improve the lotto humanity. But then that is like aiming to get rid of human factors like greed and fear. Instead of 'targeting' the enemy with bombs we could use the AI to show them HOW to improve their lot by education and using technology to grow more and be more healthy etc. The big flaw in capitalism is that it is a 'winner take all' [or take 'most'] and leave others in the dust.
3
Without question, American Industry helped to save the planet in WW II. What if Ford employees had taken the stance that some Google staff are promoting?
The freedom that we all get to live and work under comes with a price. Helping to put the best tools in the hands of those protecting America is the least we can all do.
11
CEO to Google Snivelers: Quit. Go join ISIS Google and see how it goes. Best wishes!
7
It would be a good idea for all the left leading engineers to spend a semester or two abroad in a repressive country say like North Korea, China, Iran, or some other charming dictatorship. Then these idiots would be awoken from their progressive slumber and discover that some areas of the world are truly evil and want to hurt the USA, this experience should get them past their false morality. Till then I'm sure the good people at IBM, Amazon or some place else can take of this.
16
It would be a great idea if the majority of American citizens of all stripes could spend a semester or two abroad in a non-repressive country that doesn't harbor a giant military and gets along with other nations. Then they might be awoken from their nightmare and realize that it is actually possible to create policy and act on it in a way that creates a more peaceful world for everyone. Think Canada, that would be a fairly easy trip to make.
You did hit one nail on the head though: the Google people don't have to do this work if they don't believe in it and they can convince the leadership not to do it. We're a democracy, with a capitalist economic system: let IBM or Amazon or someone else do the work, if they want it. Funny, that's exactly what they're doing... isn't it?
8
Canada, all of western Europe, and Japan have enjoyed the benefits of that military guarantee. Travel and read some history.
3
You have been sold on Iran being repressive -- in truth it is MORE free than many in the so-called free-west.
One of the worst kept secrets in the world is that artificial intelligence technology is of paramount importance to the national security interests of the United States. The U.S. simply cannot afford to take a stance against the weaponization of AI unless that is done by strict verifiable international arms control treaties. The conundrum facing the world's great powers is that there
appears to be no upper limit to artificial intelligence. It is entirely possible if not likely that AI technology will surpass human capabilities within a time frame of decades or even years from the present. That will require global conversations and global accommodations for AI risks.
4
I wondered whether any one among the people commenting have ever been in combat, and having escaped death, whether they would feel differently.
Daryl
11
Why would that matter?
If he caves, it is time for me to find another search engine and email service.
2
You'll be missed. But say, have you heard about duck duck go?
5
I hear Yahoo is excellent.
The fact that there are employees who object to building this tool makes them the right people for the job. Objecting to it on moral grounds means that you are fully considering the consequences of what you are building, or at least are attempting to as much as a human can, and will keep these in mind as the system is built.
Stopping a car requires brakes, and one must realize that as you are building the car, not as you're driving it. The same will apply to AI going forward. The DOD will commission the construction of this AI, one way or another. I would rather have Google, who's employees seem to be conscious of the impact their creation will have, build this tool for the DOD than say an organization like Lockheed Martin, who seems to have grown numb to the social impact their projects have and seem only to be concerned with how lethal it is.
8
Sorry Google but just like a mutual fund's aim to invest only in "socially just "businesses your employees' petition is just salve for for some severe liberal guilt.
You're part of this country, income taxes and all.
Here's another one for you: go to google.com and search on "Colt firearms" then select Shopping.
Keep pretending if you wish.
5
Yes, they’re part of the country. And numerous fell-citizens wholly object to drone strikes. As citizens who never joined the military, they should not see their work benefitting the military.
3
@Dan:And what about the folks who didn't sign the petition? Not all the Google employees came out against it.
And then there are those pesky federal income taxes. If you pay those taxes the results of your work are supporting the military.
Does the stance of the petitioners mean that no one in the military can use the Google search engine? That suppliers to the military cannot use it?
Will the Google petitioners move off of all land taken by US military force?
But your position does make for a better polemic.
2
The thought that the government wants a fast tract to good artificial intelligence with the help of Google tells me that they want something that can be injected into the area where the mind is supposed to be so they can use it on the Commander-In-Chief Stable Genius.
Better it be Google at the forefront than Kaspersky.
4
AND who are the people running AI at google -- many ruskies, asians, etc. can't trust them either?
A prediction - they will stand up a Federal Systems Division, along the general line of their evolution into a BH-like company...
https://qz.com/527596/eric-schmidt-explains-how-alphabet-will-emulate-be...
“...We’re trying to push the Alphabet companies to be separate companies, not divisions,” Schmidt said...
"...More autonomy allows these businesses to develop independence and identity...
This is akin to a disagreement across the SUV and electric vehicle product developers at a global car company - though the battlefield does heighten clarity and passion - so find me the top-10 global car company that doesn't have a line of SUV's...
AI notwithstanding, Google's STEM employees - defined as entities getting a regular paycheck - are mostly human...
Or so I Think...
1
Google dropped that motto a couple of years ago.
Are you aware of this?
3
Like the military, Trump, and Google have any intelligence--artificial or otherwise.
These people make their living selling our every click to the highest bidder, foreign or domestic now they get a conscience. give me a break, this is PR move move public opinion away from the deservedly bad press they are getting.
12
This all seems a bit disingenuous. Should Microsoft be castigated for developing an OS that is used on military laptops?..... Aluminum manufacturers whose alloys are used in weapons systems? .....Hersheys, whose chocolate bars are part of a ration pack?.....War is now HiTec : any company on the cutting-edge of HiTec R and D is going to be, directly or indirectly, helping the "war effort." That horse has left the barn and galloped away over some far distant hill!
5
We should focus less on artificial intelligence and more on human stupidity, Let us not forget that it is the stupid humans who are trying to create artificial intelligence. Foolish is the thought that we can kill at low cost to ourselves. What profits the bottom line in the military/industrial complex costs our decency as a people. Do not underestimate this cost. We are among the victims of our own deeds.
7
My son just finished his second tour in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, the group that gave cover to al-Qaeda. He flew 500 combat missions in defense of freedom. Who are these engineers? What loyalty do they have to the U.S..? To protecting our freedoms? How many are actually U.S. citizens? What a shame that our military has to protect them?
28
Those google engineers ARE protecting a freedom.
2
Thank you!
Why are liberals so afraid of reality? As others have mentioned in their comments, improving the accuracy and preventing bad drone strikes that kill innocents should be a worthy goal. So now instead of helping to improve battlefield conditions their emotional IQ won't allow them to do what is right.
9
Workers @Google are WRONG here! FALSE underlying assumption that they are not already “in the business of war,” because inaction on #Pentagon #AI project helps U.S. enemies. Without DoD Labs, Google would not exist! What if China had invented the Internet? This stance is naive. Google workers assume other nations would return taxpayer-funded research to citizens, as the United States does by law. Here we have a largely young workforce who don’t fully comprehend that in other countries, people are “disappeared” for saying the President is a war criminal. In the United States, that hasn’t happened. It’s time for the spawn of United States government labs out in Silicon Valley to recognize that they have been weaponized. Naiveté is deadly. Look at Facebook.
Cyber is a domain. There is no green line. If Google doesn’t help the Pentagon explore AI for our national defense and security, then it helps China, Russia, and those who strap bombs to their bodies and cry “death to America” as they terrorize innocent people.
Get on board, Silicon Valley. This is not a tough ask.
3
I am liberal in my thinking but this plaintive by Google employees to remove themselves from A.I. for the reason they give is silly. Someone else will take Google’s place and achieve the same results.
8
To paraphrase President Eisenhower, "Beware the military industrial complex."
4
It's never too late to protest, voice a concern, or decide not to support warfare. Just because other countries or companies decide to build the machines of war does not abdicate others that join in to profit from it as well. Google employees have valid concerns. It's hard to understand how building drone targeting technology aligns with Google's supposed motto of ""Don't be evil". As an owner of Google's Nest products, I don't like the implication either that I am an unwitting test subject in their development of this recognition software.
7
I'm so proud of my own kids - successful millennials - who have steadfastly refused to work in any industry whose business is killing people. Because of their fields, it would be more lucrative for them to do so, but it's not even open to consideration.
10
Pray tell what industries might they work that do not support the US Defense Department. Forget finance, autos, medicine, electronics, agriculture, computer networks, shipping, retail, mining, power generation. What else is left? Are they seminarians? Oh I see. They won’t work to kill anyone, but they will work to make it possible for someone else to kill. Good call. Like President Obama’s red line in Syria, your logic is crystal clear.
1
Thanks for your service, cgg. And I am serious. Raising 3 children who have the sense to see war and killing will never bring peace, in spite of the money that working for war brings, is a terrific and humane achievement. We need more people like that to pull the USA back from its immoral brink.
2
in our world of data analysis, it would be interesting to see a comparison, by age, of those tech execs and engineers favoring work for the defense industry and those opposing participation in military contracts.
I'm not so sure this is about a putative libertarian strain in tech as much as it is an issue of age, and to some extent, personal background.
The code writers sentiment is appreciated, but its probably too little too late. Other nations will use AI for military purposes and that basically means we will have no choice but to march down a blind alley and hope we don't create a true "TERMINATOR" scenario for mankind. The AI technology advancement requires a global agreement on its future.
President Dwight Eisenhower clearly warned us some 60 years ago of the abuse of power by the military industrial complex. I completely agree with those employees at Google who feel the company should not be involved in any type of war material production. Let’s hope that the executives at Google get the message and drop out of the defense department project.
7
“This plan will irreparably damage Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent,” the letter says. “Amid growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public’s trust.” It suggests that Google risks being viewed as joining the ranks of big defense contractors like Raytheon, General Dynamics and the big-data firm Palantir.""
Knowing how the military/industrial complex works, it seems this is too little and too late.
Tragic for a company that we all so loved and believed in, but you can't fight "Pentagon" or its affiliates. We can try, we should try, but....look where we are right now. It's beyond subversive.
No one listened to Eisenhower....why is that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
5
The U.S. should have a Manhattan Project to develop defensive AI only. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before China develops AI that will overwhelm the rest of the world. They have no compunctions about using it for any purpose, and they already have personal information on millions of Americans from their OPM hack. Unless the U.S. develops robust definitive AI and secures databases from AI-powered hacking tools, there is no future for us as an independent country.
4
Should we do it with Chinese engineers?
That’s what’s going on here now.
2
This is a one really really good thing that can come out of Google's collective expertize, for as long as there will be war -- and that is an unfortunate fact to some -- any and all ways to minimize collateral damage must be explored and implemented.
2
Why would they? A government contract is lucrative and gives Google plenty of incentives. I know they're worried about drones but there's no proof that it's assisting in drones. If it does, well you can't control the military from the outside looking in.
2
The competition for AI talent in the tech industry is intense. Offending the wrong engineers could lead to an exodus that could cost more that the contract is worth.
2
Project Maven is explicitly designed to analyze drone footage with an AI, to cut out the hours of 'dead video' when drones are just getting on site, or there is no relevant human activity going on at the site. Right now, this is all analyzed by humans, and there is simply too many hours of footage to watch it all in real time. We often don't spot someone or something of importance until hours after it has happened. Maven, from its announcement to its award to Google, has been about addressing this problem; cutting out footage of empty parking lots and identifying targets automatically. Humans then review the footage Maven flags as important and make decisions based on it.
Could this be part of a larger gateway project for USG to access and weaponize Google user data--for more datapoints per person than Facebook I bet.
1
Why would we not utilize A.I in combat. First off where we are out numbered A.I can give us a strategic advantage, furthermore I'd like to add that if NATO hasn't set regulations why create "dogmas" [euphemism]. Secondly what is it with peoples irrational fear of artificial intelligence! I admit we have a long way to go, since self driving cars would rather crash people and our android devices are laughing at us.
6
Probably more likely to destroy humanity with a super intelligent AI than a drone. They should pull out of that.
4
The parade Trump so badly wants could be a public demonstration of Artificial Intelligence. So much easier on the pavement, too.
4
Don't be evil.
Seems clear enough. Then comes the trite argument that improved targeting will save innocent lives during war.
That's an argument that is rather akin to saying the hostages won't be harmed as long as everyone does what their captor asks.
It's also a very old argument that seems to have little basis when empirically tested. Prior to the US entry to WWII, the US Air Force was arguing that its use of "precision daylight bombing" would do the same thing - save innocent lives - in contrast to British tactics of night-time area bombing and Nazi day and night terror bombing.
To the resulting dead on the ground, it made little difference what the claimed intentions about avoiding killing the innocent asserted.
And next thing you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in the Air Force's rearview mirror as it heads straight into a Cold War it shaped by its dependence on the horrors of nuclear war in a - so-far - marginally successful attempt to avoid exactly that outcome.
Thus, it's easy to see why smart people aren't exactly reassured with such cheaply-coined, but possibly later very dear verbiage about having only the best intentions in cooperating with DoD. BTDT.
10
As long as we humans choose to settle our disputes by killing each other, we would be foolish to hinder our ability to kill the other guy at the lowest cost of life on our side. Hopefully future generations will find other ways to resolve differences.
6
why wait for future generations? this is something we should be working on NOW. all of us.
we should be working on it not because it is easy, but because it is hard, as President Kennedy said.
2
Don't leave it to future generations to do what must be done now, mr.perrywhite. Foolish is refusing now to hinder the ability to kill the other guy.. For us to kill them at lower cost only ensures that they will kill us at lower cost. To think otherwise is to deny the truism that what goes around comes around. Put slightly differently by Malcolm X: the chickens come home to roost.
3
Taking a stand and refusing to help your country is a un-American, and frankly treason. I don't know what's going on out there in California, but the U.S. military are the good guys, and helping them is a good thing.
11
No, it is not 'treason'. Sending troops into wars without legal justification is treason. The 'treason' claim was used for years to vilify opponents of the War on Viet Nam and again the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. LBJ's escalation of the War on Viet Nam based on the fraudulent Tonkin Gulf incident and Richard Nixon's extension of the war for 5 more years were clearly treason. George W. Bush's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were treason.
You should get over the obsolete belief that whatever The King, The Tsar, or The Emperor does must be supported enthusiastically - and that opposition is treason. We don't live in an kingdom or empire - at least not legally - yet. Citizens in a republic, democracy , or democratic republic (take your pick) have a responsibility to speak out against evils (done in their name) perpetrated by their leaders. That's how it works.
These Google employees are doing what good citizens should be doing.
12
and don't forget - you and I and all the other taxpayers are footing the bill and have a responsibility for what goes on in our name and our dime.
1
you mean the people who would destroy a village in order to save it?
don't be naive, don't be brainwashed.
we WANT to think we are the good guys, but so does every other power, whether national or non state.
Do these employees really think that they're working for a benevolent corporation? Did they miss the part where Google assisted the Chinese government's censorship? their tax evasion? their restraint of trade and antitrust actions?
28
I thought Americans were generally fine with our military executing foreign civilians via drone in remote rural parts of war torn nations? This is what we have been doing for a decade and a half now, with thousands killed, most of them innocent. Why are some suddenly discovering a conscience about such acts of state sponsored terror?
1
We are seeing the rise of a new way of seeing the world among the young. Young adults grew up in a world where they used the Internet to game and chat with people all over the world. A small example: in the free game "Clash of Clans" it's very common to be in a "clan" or a team with English speakers who live in the Phillipines, India, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, UK, Canada, and Mexico. You quickly learn that people are the same all over the world.
Should we be using drones to make killing more convenient for us? What will happen to us if we continue to kill others without needing to see the carnage or hear the wails of parents and children? Say the drones do the killing for us. Who will be there to face the consequences? Will we even know what those consequences are?
8
Maybe it is me but:
AI+ADVANCED ROBOTICS = TERMINATOR?
Do we really want autonomous machines that can kill?
2
Google should forget about the Pentagon and help protect our power grid, nuclear plants and water systems from Russia who has inserted code into them and can take them down at will.
5
Yes, yes, yes! am thinking maybe i should restock my log pile for the fireplace.
Look at the potential for good: drone strikes are not going to stop, and few people object when terrorists are killed. It is the accidental targeting of innocent civilians that gets everyone upset. If that could be eliminated, it would be good.
Artificial Intelligence. If that isn't an oxymoron, I don't know what is.
We will certainly be our own undoing.
1
I’ll bite. Why is it an oxymoron?
Like any other technology, every successful application of AI is going to be looked at by every significant military organization in the world. That is a fact. We should be concerned about this, but I don't think protesting Google employees are going to provide the solution. There will always be plenty of AI experts who want to help their nation's military for patriotic and/or financial reasons. If the Google guys have ideas on how to manage this better, let's hear them.
1
Don't be evil.
9
Define evil.
Google is changing its corporate slogan from "Don't Be Evil" to "Help America Become Skynet!".
4
We must compete with China and our military needs the best technology it can get.
7
Years ago when I learned that Google had the motto "do no evil" I assumed that this was equivalent to a prediction that they would end up doing evil. Otherwise why were they bothering to state the morally obvious and thus the banal? Beware of people seeking great wealth and power, and beware more when they claim to be eschewing evil.
10
I am at a loss to understand the opposition to drones.
Why is it acceptable to send 3,000 kids to their deaths year in year out but it is not acceptable for drones to do most of the gruntwork and prevent loss of lives?
You send an army to capture, say, a big Al Qaeda honcho in a city and half the city is going to be demolished. You send a drone and perhaps a couple of buildings might be demolished, but not the city.
I find it much more humane.
94
By taking any skin out of the game, drones make wars more likely to start and less likely to ever end. Putting the killing of people half a world away in the hands of cheeseburger-scarfing gamers in Nevada, who can check out at 5 PM and watch American Idol that evening reduces humanity itself to a bunch of game pieces on a board. What happens when there is inevitably a mistake and an innocent family is murdered? Does he loses a vacation day?
29
With respect to your position of taking skin out of the game, drone operators are not cheeseburger scarfing happy go lucky gamers. They are highly trained military personnel who are on literally 12-hour shifts in a small box about half the size of a shipping container. (I hope they've had the sense to cut down their hours since I last heard because that is an unrealistic amount of time to maintain alertness.) They spend most of their time watching very dull activity from above, trying to glean what intelligence they can, determining how to hit targets if commanded without harming civilians, and providing major operational security to our troops and allied troops on the ground. When they kill, or fail to protect fellow soldiers, they are fortunate enough to not risk physical injury, but they also suffer PSTD as severely as any other combatant, combined with the guilt and cognitive dissonance of raining death down from on high. Think air traffic controllers with the added responsibility to kill. You can have moral objections to drones, but don't insult those who have gone through the highly skilled training and the subsequent psychological guilt nightmares that operating them requires. If they do watch American Idol, it's because they need a break from the stress.
3
The issue is that when it becomes easy and cheap to kill someone a nation will lower its threshold to commit violence and few will care who the nation is killing and why. In some cases payback may be horrifying, making 9/11 look like a warmup. Additionally, witness our never ending wars in the Middle East. One reason they are never ending is that our casualties are low and as long as volunteers are getting killed and injured we don't care. It makes losing look like winning.
13
Maybe these disgruntled brats should give up their plush amenity rich safe spaces and go fight terror in the deserts and mountains! Then we wouldn't need highly precise drone strikes on those that behead people and rape and murder women who want to attend school. Or maybe give up their jobs to Afghan women who want to escape a world that Google workers don't want to disrupt!
7
As long as you trust the Commander and Chief not to start unnecessary police actions, the problem should be minimal.
On a related topic, one has to wonder if Posse Comitatus applies to the Mexican border, an ideal field test location to use AI to detect pollos and their coyotes.
3
Is the border not already surveilled by drones?
2
yes, it is. we sure don't need a wall.
We all need to be aware that any technology intended to protect us and/or hurt someone else can also be used against us. Once the tech is in government hands, history suggests it will be used. Google may intend to "Do No Evil" but to later say that they (Google) didn't know it was going to be used for some other purpose won't soothe those who it is used again. We humans are very good at turning technology to our own purposes, whether good or bad.
The next step for the Google letter signers is to leave Google if they are certain in their moral sense. (I expect most won't go.)
17
These are employees, expressing their views. They are fortunate enough to work in a culture that allows this expression. Your comment, about them taking the "next step" and leaving, goes beyond presenting a moral challenge, it is a thinly veiled criticism. In fact, I expect some of them will leave, rather than work on a project they have strong convictions against. This happened during the Viet Nam war, too: it was called conscientious objection.
4
I wonder how many of protestors actually work in the AI section. For we know, their role at Google could be ensuring erectile dysfunction ads hit the right demographics. I expect some group at Google works that important market.
By this reasoning, we should stop ALL AI development.
If all of our best efforts are directed towards building a better killing machine, we have failed as a nation, as a people.
55
Amen. But what about half of all of our best efforts? America already spends more on warfare than the next 10 countries combined. A majority of America's best scientists and engineers are focused on war-related efforts. It's already horrible.
Imagine what we could accomplish if we put those resources to good use. We could be a true moral leader, instead of a military leader. This alone would greatly reduce the number of America's enemies.
3
Agree- and yet very few of the marches for science made any statements against war. We don 't need more science- we need more scientists who believe it is wrong to kill other people.
What do you suppose the Chinese are going to do with the AI technology they are developing. This is part of the new cold war. If we stand on high moral ground and don't develop this technology then we will be at the mercy of those who do.
99
Why should Google do it? That's why we pay taxes...
2
Maybe that AI technology should be put to better use protecting our power grid, nuclear plants and water systems that Russian has planted code in and can take down on a whim.
4
While you may be right on the military application. What they really appear to be working on is developing the most invasive surveillance state in the history of dictatorial regimes.
I stopped when Scott Shane and Daisuke Wakabayashi referreed to the employees as idealistic:
Definition of idealistic
: of or relating to idealists or idealism
Definition of idealist
1 a : an adherent of a philosophical theory of idealism
b : an artist or author who advocates or practices idealism in art or writing
2 : one guided by ideals; especially : one that places ideals before practical considerations
So, it is not practical for employees to ask that their behemoth of an organization not contribute to waging war? Because...it is not practical to prevent war or making money off of it?
3
Although it is very commendable what Google workers doing but their effort will not make a dent in the cause.
There's no solution to this problem but raising a responsible, and humane generation who man the critical positions in the world. Be it president, CEO, army general or even team leader of a combat unit. It is inevitable that any army will acquire such advanced weaponry (AI driven robotics) eventually and use it against the disadvantaged. When Spanish colonialists arrived Americas they wiped out indigenous people without much cost because they had much higher means to project violence (war is a violence). Same happened when US Army invaded Iraq and we know rest of the story since then. An army that has been trying to pick a fight constantly does not qualify to acquire such weaponry.
9
When Europeans landed in the Americas the "weapon" they brought that was the most deadly and that killed 90 per cent of the people who were already here was disease.
1
'man the critical positions of the world'...'man them'? Have we learned nothing over these last few months with the #metoo movement, and all of the other equality related headlines in the news?
It was scary enough empowering our own government with new weapons and new technologies. Now it feels auicidal to do so for a government under trumpian control.
Can’t Google and others wait until trump and the radical right are out of power?
5
“Amid growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public’s trust.”
Given that Google's Ray NoContest Kurzweil mused about 21st century weapons ensuring that there will be "no contest" offered by "the terrans" when "the cosmists" push for building god-like machines, there is even more of a threat to public trust.
Glad you mentioned this embedding of the assumption of war in that singularity nonsense, a hobby for rich and bored physicists. Wish they would put their attention on peace, but perhaps that isn't manly enough...
1
Didn't Google give up on its motto long ago on "Don't be evil" when they started collecting and exploiting people's information? Are they a little less brazen and evil than Facebook?
9
Fully agree - nobody should be targeted by Google until they sign an inscrutable EULA. After that they’re fair game.
I have a suggestion for these courageous Google workers: if you really think the policies of your employer are immoral, then do us all a favor and quit your jobs. Work for a company that isn’t creating a worldwide panopticon.
10
The NYTs cannot go long without pushing the widely discredited baloney about Russian interference. Facebook over expanded its platform with poor controls and allowed Cambridge Analytica to abuse it for political purposes. Idealism is not Facebooks motivation but seeking ways to become more profitable. The drone war was a way for Obama to attack alleged enemies without using soldiers. For Google to join on the Pentagon dole is typical.
3
These folks at Google should immediately stop working with technologies developed by the Department of Defense.
They can begin by ceasing all work dealing with the Internet and GPS.
They will then likely have time on their hands. They could spend this time watching episodes of "The Man in the High Castle."
And, after all, if drones are less accurate and accidentally hit civilian targets more often, what's the big deal?
In truth, I shouldn't be sarcastic, and I'm sympathetic to these folks. But they strike me as being naive.
9
Several major American corporations are engaged in doing things that benefit the business of warfare, and war making, and many of them owe their existence to the 100's of billions of dollars made off creating wars, by whatever means.
To object to Googles' participation in the business of warfare, requires that such protests also target all others engaged in the business of warfare.
But, consider this; the largest manufacturer, seller, and user, of all weaponry on the planet is the United States of America, actually more than all others combined, meaning that if that market ended, the United States would enter another Great Recession, with hundreds of thousands out of work, including former armed services members, etc., and economic upheaval lasting decades.
War is riches, peace is poverty.
Could it be different, sure it could, but after 68 years alive on this planet, I've seen and experienced enough to convince me that our corporate owned government and corporate managed society, recognizes war and the ensuing reconstruction after the bombs and rockets stop, as the greatest evergreen economic engine of all time, and the masses are seen as a renewal resource always available and easily manipulated to be fodder for the weaponry.
What a wonderful innovative species we are !!!
39
Not to mention the reduction of population globally without which stopping global warming doesn't have a snowflakes chance in hell.
1
Simply amazing.
California employees trying to get their company stop helping The United States Defense Department.
Who do they think they are helping here?
This use to be called traitorous behavior.
Wonder why the things Google did for Obama weren't protest at the time?
Sad and Disgusting. Maybe they are mad Amazon got the cloud contract?
7
You must be young. I'm a boomer engineer, and working for the DoD or any private company devoted to the Military-Industrial Complex was considered evil by many of us who were still recovering from the Vietnam War and who also apposed global nuclear proliferation. Maybe in your universe you consider this to be traitorous behavior, but not in mine.
Google is not an arm of the United States Government. They can't be forced to help our government achieve its military goals. If the employees want to object to the sort of government contracts Google takes on, it is their right to do so.
197
yes. But I don’t have to use google.
Thanks for the flattery, YOU must be young to not remember that before the lefties of the 60's came around this was treasonous behavior.
2
A US company supporting innovative, technologically-challenging work that could enhance our national security is hardly "evil." At least, if you're on one side of the fence I think you see the benefits. Many are preoccupied with their supposed moral outrage and likely aren't taking the time to get to know the people who are on the front lines protecting our country and for whom these enhancements and developments would pose a tremendous benefit -- including, possibly, saving the lives of US and partner forces.
59
On both sides of the fence: code cutter and former military. Thank you for your insightful comments.
Supporting our national security? Oh please.
The false war we picked in Iraq caused over 100,000 civilian deaths, and an estimated 175,000 total.
People who went to work for Google (and I was one of them) didn’t do so with the idea that they would be supporting our ability to kill without risk.
If the government wants this technology, by all means let it develop it itself. Let it lure these top engineers with pay and salary and motivate them with its mission.
Until then, they have every right to let Google’s leadership know that they’ll walk rather than work on projects like these.
And if it’s so important to you, go get a computer science degree yourself and build it.
5
I don’t think those at the front lines are protecting the country of the USA. At most, someone’s political ambitions.
3
Google is a corporation, listed in the stock market with many many shareholders. In spite of what their motto says, they are driven by the endless greed of their shareholders, known as share-holder value maximization. If Pichai does not abide by that principle, he will be out in no time and replaced by someone who is willing to do what needs to be done. Eric Schmidt was brought in at the outset so that the two young engineers/mathematicians did not give the house away without satisfying the real owners of everything: intellectual property, vision, intelligence, creativity and so forth. Let the workers urge the CEO to pull out of the Pentagon collaboration, no question that is a noble cause. Yet, I am not holding my breath that Google can afford doing much at this stage of the game. They are already to big and have sold their souls to too many shareholders!
4
Google gave up on "don't be evil" long ago. As seems to be the case with all tech startups that become successful, megalomania and never-enough greed replace any other values in its leaders.
I mean google glass, driverless cars etc.? This is all they can come up with?With their vast fortunes that could do so much to benefit society, all they want to do is get vaster fortunes by any means necessary even to the point of helping the pentagon kill people better. Disgusting.
7
Too bad the signatories don't have the same "scruples" when it comes to gathering personal data.
60
How do you know that they aren't opposed to collecting personal data? Your comment is no very well thought out and stinks of bias.
If the workers at Cyberdyne Corporation had refused to develop Skynet on ethical grounds, then the 1997 armageddon would never have happened... oh wait
1
Cyber is the battlespace of the future; ALL OF IT. AI is a weapon. f you don't like working in a defense industry, quit.
3
If you see a military drone overhead, what do you yell to warn people?
"Duck! Duck! Go!
DuckDuckGo,
DuckDuckGo!"
3
If North Korea nuked Washington, and only the politicians and warlords there died, would that be an act of war or a huge favor for democracy?
4
The bigger problem with Google...why do they hate Christianity. They create graphics for every holiday under the sun...and nothing for Easter Sunday. Now some of their workers want to shy away from assisting the Pentagon. No wonder Trump was elected.
What's wrong with helping your own country. I'm NOT a citizen of the world...whatever that means. And I certainly don't want to go it alone...but things are really out of whack.
3
I no longer use any Google projects or services.
Let me know what happens.
2
I seriously doubt that.
Remember, once upon a time, "Do No Harm"? Ah, those wonderous early days of Google. Now, "Monetize It" is the mantra. The Pentagon loves its new toys, its temporary advantages like, ahhh ... the internet (a DARPA/Pentagon project that went worldwide and is now used by Russia and North Korea to attack us.)
It is one thing to google "drones". But running a great search engine is very different from running a search-and-destroy drone. As Alfred Nobel learned, an invention useful for building roads and bridges and mines can also be used to kill tens of thousands.
Google - we nerds are the source of your success, but we will expose your errors, too. Ask Mark Z.
18
Too-late has the tech world decided they need to engage with this world on a level other than pure innovation and investor-conscious business decisions.
Pay some taxes. Enrich the local community fabric instead of busing around it. Monitor your platforms to discourage toxic and destabilizing behavior. Study the implications of your technology and UNDERSTAND what it will do in 5, 10 or 20 years.
In other words - come out of your expensive insulated bunkers in New Zealand and join the rest of us. You're part of this world too.
47
Interesting that Facebook (thus its workers by extension) has been condemned for its apparent blindness to what evil it may propagate, but Google workers trying to do the right thing are seen by many commenters as being ‘idealistic’ and even unpatriotic - because their skills are being used by the military.
It is easier than ever for our own weapons to end up in the wrong hands. If AI is truly akin to human intelligence, nor is it necessarily limited to targeting foreign enemies, as we have already seen, in a world scarily and increasingly resembling 1984 (much of it with our consent!)
6
Whatever happened to, "Don't be evil"?
3
I am an engineer and I would not work for a company who is helping the military kill people. Drones are killing 100s of innocent people and we must stop it. We are making 100s of more enemies each time we kill one!
6
"Drones are killing 100s of innocent people and we must stop it."
I completely agree - and from what I can tell, so do the people behind Project Maven. Improving the targeting of drone strikes means reducing the number of strikes on innocent people and thus the number of non-combatant casualties. If you don't trust that this is the goal, then that's a separate issue to be addressed in the halls of Capitol Hill, not in Silicon Valley.
11
“After all, the chief business of the American people is business."
But, there is an ever-present tension because,
"The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists."
Who will carry the day at Google?
Calvin Coolidge, 17 January 1925
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=24180
1
Yeah, for the 30K feet view of how this will play out you just have to watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Project Insight)... Or Terminator (Skynet)... Or even The Matrix' back story... I know it's silly to compare this pic to Hollywood movie plots but I just don't get how companies deeply invested in AI don't see past quarterly profits.
2
We have been strongly hostile to the Chinese technology companies due to their link to the Chinese military. I guess we are just as guilty. How can we be on any moral high ground? Of course, just ask Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, they are being hunted down because they are telling the true.
2
I believe we are hostile toward Chinese tech companies because they STEAL our proprietary secrets and pass them along to the Chinese military. That is an entirely different scenario, then Google CEO working on a Pentagon project, freely, and without using stolen knowledge.
14
Wrong analogy. The Chinese companies you allude to have strong associations and/or are funded by ChiComm and the Military. Anything that gives them an advantage over us is one thing, but cheating and robbing from us is altogether something else. Unacceptable. Snowden and Assange - wrong analogy in this context.
6
As noted, Google employees are encouraged to speak out. I know a number of them and they strike me as young, idealistic, but not terribly politically sophisticated. They excel as computer engineers. Many think that they are equally knowledgeable politically. But they tend to approach all the world's problems as engineers. A few thousand dissenting engineers, among 74,000 employees, does not strike me as a particularly significant development.
19
I agree with people who know more than I do. Drones, and AI, in the military make me extremely nervous. It'll be like a child playing with his little toy soldiers, and little toy weapons.
AI is overrated. Comes off like a silicon insert in a hoody. It's only as good as the people programing it, and we have a striking lack of humanity in this market.
1
If it wasn’t for the US military there would be no silicone valley.
33
Silicone Valley is in L.A.
I'm sorry, they don't want to help DoD improve their ability to hit what they're aiming at? I mean, they don't want DoD to more accurately hit terrorist safehouses rather than the school nearby? What logic are they using?
37
DLA, I have to agree with you on this. Killing is unavoidable, and necessary to at least some (and oftentimes to a large) degree, in combat situations. If technology can be used to limit the killing, to the fullest extent possible, to just combatants and to minimize the killing of non-combatants, then we should use this technology. The Google workers who signed the letter don't seem to realize that their concerns really relate to policies regarding proper use of our military. For that, they need to do what the rest of us need to do: contact their representatives in Washington.
50
I think the concern is more about where this technology is headed. Eventually, autonomous weapons could be set free to roam, seek and destroy targets without human intervention. It's part of the near (dystopian) future that is very likely, given human's propensity towards war combined with America's drive to dominate the battlefield. ("We can't allow an autonomous weapons gap!" -- Dr. Strangelove)
The question is whether or not Google employees want to participate as key enablers of that future. I certainly wouldn't want to work at Google as a participant.
7
If you're company's motto is "do not evil", it is pretty important to stay out of the death business.
3
"G.E., We Bring Good Things to Life."
Folks, you can't have your toaster without the jet engines to power the corporate colonialism that makes the American Way possible. You give up all the trapping of our consumer society and Google will stop doing evil.
1
"G.E., We Bring Good Things to Life."
Did you see Debra Chasnoff's Oscar winning 1991 documentary "Deadly Deception"? About GE's nuclear weapons program at their Hanford, Washington plant? The things they brought to life for the residents around that plant were hardly good.
2
Awesome. Rest assured the Chinese and Russians will not have these scruples.
20
https://ca-commercial.com/casestudies/casestudynewspaper
Maybe China knows which newspaper gave Cambridge Analytica millions of subscribers' data?
1
Whatever happened to ,"Don't be evil"? Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
14
So that NYT readers understand that others feel differently, I disagree with the protesting employees and urge Google to help our government defend our country and its citizens.
Reminder - we were attacked on our soil, and thousands of US citizens were murdered by Islamic extremists. Al Quaeda and its brethren think of this as war. Well, right back at them.
Google - please be patriotic for a change.
21
Reminder....the weapons we first invent are inevitably turned against us.
“Idealistic” is right.
Trying to remove the tech industry, and let’s say things computer related, from Pentagon research is like trying to remove guns.
Yes, it would be great if we could just remove all the guns, or even all the guns except for law-enforcement and military. BUT . . .
3
When this country needed Apple's help to access a mass murder's cell phone, Apple thumbed its nose at the FBI. Now we have Google employees encouraging their company to not assist in the defense of this country. Maybe it is time to understand that these tech companies with their own substantial presence in hostile countries ( eg Apple manufacturing in or sourcing from China) are more aligned with people opposed to this country than aligned with the country. A slight twist on this is Facebook's complicity in the Trump election: the information provided directly or indirectly to Cambridge Analytica. Of course, Google is selling the same type of information. The fact is these companies are not benign entities. They have their own agenda and it is not the same as that of the US. We all need to realize this and deal with them at arms length. And, we need to examine the benefits the US is providing these companies, and demand some reciprocity. This means if you do not help the US, we are not going to bend over backwards to help you( as we have). If Apple and Google see it will cost them money to not change their ways, they just might change and be willing to assist the US instead of undermining the US.
7
So developing AI to improve drone targeting to save innocent people is bad, but building AI that will cause thousands (millions?) of people to lose their jobs and their ability to exist is good?
105
Yes, drone targeting "saves innocent people." Also, "Peacekeeper" is a good name for a bomb... Orwell must be spinning like a top.
4
Universal basic income is going to be an inevitable necessity at some point. Unless we want US cities to resemble Calcutta.
Losing our jobs is inevitable. But then technology will program the algorithms for minimum basic income, so, no worries, perhaps your grandchildren will get a chance to learn many things in workshops of their choosing while being paid automatically whether they show up or not. This is an illustration of thinking beyond one step. You should. And you should encourage your leaders to as well. And then these Google engineers should put it into practice.
The targeting can only be used on non US citizens right ? No, oh my.
24
One might recall that President Obama used the same targeting methodology to kill an American citizen without formal charges, or trial, but deemed (by Obama) to be a terrorist.
3
I thought Google's policy was 'do no evil'.
Why knows how Trump and Bolton would put this to use.
26
I am encouraged by the Google workers willing to speak to their scial consciences.
69
This is a hopeful sign that tech workers are no longer merely concerned with writing code, but also with the results of the code they write.
216
Programmers were always concerned with the results of their code. It's just that in the past the mandate has been "Make this object work" and now the mandate is "Make this person buy a product." Before, making it merely work helped people. Now making it work means harming people.
The workers didn't change. The work did.
11
We always did feel that way. Code cutters get branded as evil-doers and mad-scientists, but we actually have strong moral consciences. It is an art form, and it isn't all about the bucks.
Except we now have a bunch of H1-B visa holders trying to dictate what an American company does.