Dozen employees (so far) at Google quit in protest as company continues with "Project Maven" military project.

[Canada EH]

4 hours ago, AresKrieger said:

on identified targets well they'd be wrong as the military usually launches anyway

you got that right

 

as long as they get their main person, they dont care about any others

[wasab]

At least the government isn’t torturing its own citizens for human mind control experienments, oh wait, I spoke too soon.....

 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

 

[Serin]

Humans. 
Apparently we can only learn by doing, rather than the much vaunted 'from history'.
Even if that learning takes the deaths of countless people. But hey, its ok. We'll all feel very bad for ourselves afterward.

[Taf the Ghost]

Well, this is hilarious. Google already turned itself into one of the biggest spy agencies in the world, and now the employees are upset?

[Kamina]

Wow! Google's new slogan should be "Do Be Evil."

[ARikozuM]

How long until Project Maven mistakenly decides to flag a terrorist's Youtube video for using license-free music? 

 

I'm surprised people haven't learned from Watch_Dogs and 80's to 90's movies where someone above knew everyone and everything. It's like sci-fi doesn't have lessons beneath their super-awkward humor (looking at you Starship Troopers!). 

Spoiler

Movie scarred me as a child...

Spoiler

I became interested in learning about ecology. 

 

 

[Sniperfox47]

7 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

And no one asks if this technology might help save lives of those misidentified targets? Or the lives saved by properly identifying threats? Don't let the doubt cloud judgement.

 

If this tool helps, I'm for it. But i believe only people should make the choice to kill someone else. A drone is an extension, a tool. Not a decision maker.

 

And I highly doubt Google working on this project is the most "ethically questionable" thing Google has ever done (or will ever do)....

While I don't disagree with the thought that this will likely save lives short term, I'm still worried about the implications of it's use long term. Slippery slope argument and all that.

 

There is a lot of questionable legislation and practices that get pushed through on the basis of "terrorism". While I don't have an issue with this program itself, I do worry about what will be built atop it in the name of combatting "terrorists".

[Mira Yurizaki]

From what I could at gather from military doctrine in the US (which I won't talk about how I might know this), this sort of technology is, hopefully, not going to be used to make decisions for people. It's supposed to be used to aid people in making decisions faster. At the end of the day, a human is going to push the big red button. SkyNet scenarios are highly very unlikely, as the government trusts technology as much as your grandmother.

 

Besides that, for a lot of companies, government funding for a product has a lot of positive qualities to it. For one, the funding was already approved so the money is practically guaranteed if you win the contract. And because it's government funded, it's basically forced to be public domain (because any work the government does is in the public domain, barring security classification issues), so anyone who else who wants to work on the technology can without worrying about patents and crap.

 

If anything, that appeal is the probably the reason why Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are pushing for this project. Though not everything they work on will be public domain, if they're building on a foundation. They may just be using this to secure more funding to further their tech.

[Tellos]

@M.Yurizaki cept the US military has stated they want drones with the ability to decide to strike on their own without human help.

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, Tellos said:

@M.Yurizaki cept the US military has stated they want drones with the ability to decide to strike on their own without human help.

Which was probably said by some general or some senator or some other public worker of the government that is just saying things.

 

Companies for years have been trying this for a long time and no one has the miltary's buy-in on a fully autonomous killing machine. Plus there's also the massive public backlash against such things. Any sane military commander wouldn't really want a fully autonomous system. Someone still has to pull the trigger.

[asus killer]

the fact that google considers this a positive thing to be a part of really speaks volumes about the company itself.

We really need a facebook, a google, android, phone makers from Europe, .... Someone in the EU should really do something about this. Sick and tired of this crazy Russians, Chinese and Americans. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

53 minutes ago, asus killer said:

the fact that google considers this a positive thing to be a part of really speaks volumes about the company itself.

We really need a facebook, a google, android, phone makers from Europe, .... Someone in the EU should really do something about this. Sick and tired of this crazy Russians, Chinese and Americans. 

They gave us Linux, so there's that.

[Nicnac]

They'll still have to fight the top-kek army of the internet.

[Ryujin2003]

6 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

While I don't disagree with the thought that this will likely save lives short term, I'm still worried about the implications of it's use long term. Slippery slope argument and all that.

 

There is a lot of questionable legislation and practices that get pushed through on the basis of "terrorism". While I don't have an issue with this program itself, I do worry about what will be built atop it in the name of combatting "terrorists".

It will save lives in the long term. "Targeting" isn't just dropping munitions on someone, it is identifying certain threats or activities accurately. A target doesn't necessarily mean kinetic. And if AI can more easily recognize threats to coalition forces, then that should be a good thing.

 

Or, it can save more lives being implemented on the nation's borders. If AI can more easily identify drug and human trafficking, then those incidents can be more easily responded to. And before someone decides to rail me because I'm against immigration or what not, remember that South West US is a freaking dessert, and despite not always being in the news, families get snuggled across the border and released to find their own way. You'd be surprised how many people get lost and die of dehydration on the middle of freaking no where. If AI can be used to combat this, that's a win.

 

There is a lot of practicality to this. Humans are only so good, and certain things can be very easily missed.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the legislation, which is why I don't understand why these employees decide to leave. They don't get things the way they want so they decide to quit and make a point.

 

I think their efforts would be more meaningful if they tried to get Google and other big IT companies to try and get governments to modernize legislation to match the current and future requirements of adapting technology to or societies.

 

(I could go on my Google and bring hypocrites rant, but I'll save that for another time.)

[Brooksie359]

7 hours ago, Tellos said:

@M.Yurizaki cept the US military has stated they want drones with the ability to decide to strike on their own without human help.

Yeah nobody in their right mind would trust AI to autonomously carry out drone attacks on targets it believes are threats. If the thing malfunctioned it would do alot of damage and most people wouldn't take that type of risk. I mean look at all the Twitter AIs that ended up being basically 4chan bots. You think they would trust something like that to never malfunction? I highly doubt that.

[suicidalfranco]

TFW I would love to be in their place and work on a project that could save the life of a nation's heroes.

[Deus Voltage]

16 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

TFW I would love to be in their place and work on a project that could save the life of a nation's heroes.

I hope you are being sarcastic.

[Misanthrope]

So there's only 12 people at Google that realized that the "Don't be evil" slogan was complete and utter fucking bullshit?

 

I am surprised there's not at least 120 if not 1,200 people quitting over this.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Well I'll just leave this here:

Quote

"We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong ... No, I don't have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it has caused. I feel about the airplane much the same as I do in regard to fire. That is, I regret all the terrible damage caused by fire, but I think it is good for the human race that someone discovered how to start fires and that we have learned how to put fire to thousands of important uses." - Orville Wright

 

[DildorTheDecent]

4 hours ago, Nicnac said:

They'll still have to fight the top-kek army of the internet.

They'll not win tho kek.

[Princess Twilight Sparkle]

More reason to stay indoors so the drones can’t see you.

[Sniperfox47]

50 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

So there's only 12 people at Google that realized that the "Don't be evil" slogan was complete and utter fucking bullshit?

 

I am surprised there's not at least 120 if not 1,200 people quitting over this.

Just want to point out that:

A) "Don't be evil" was never a slogan, because a slogan is an advertising thing. It was an internal motto and nothing more.

B) they got rid of it specifically because people like you were misunderstanding it. It's not about not ever doing any evil things, they're a company in the US they're legally obligated to do evil things for money. Sometimes there's no choice. It was nothing more than a reminder that they had a lot of information and they needed to be careful how they handled it.

 

But as @Ryujin2003 has mentioned there's nothing to indicate that this program is evil anyways.

 

You can be terrified of what people might do with it afterwards, but does that mean that Albert Einstein was evil for creating Special Relativity, or as mentioned above that the Wright brothers are evil for creating aeroplanes?

 

 

[Doobeedoo]

While I'm interested in robotics and AI I get the concern but there are worse things that aren't gaining any attention in the world as far as companies and media manipulation that are already in motion for a while. 

 

[Doobeedoo]

. 

[Misanthrope]

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

they're a company in the US they're legally obligated to do evil things for money. Sometimes there's no choice.

Except that's hardly the case here for Google as they're not really hurting for what's a really tiny deal in the overall scheme of Alphabet Inc. Overall.

 

So actually this kind of unnecessary deal to compromise a lot of the company in favor of the department of defense is precisely what the "Slogan-but-not-as-slogan" or whatever was passed around for.