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posted by janrinok on Saturday March 10 2018, @08:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the im-sorry-dave-im-afraid-i-cant-do-that dept.

Google is selling the Pentagon some Machine Learning / AI training solution so their drones and sensors can pick out the good stuff from all the crap stuff being recorded by their massive surveillance apparatus on a daily basis. Most companies would probably be super pleased by selling something to a customer. Not the Google-employees. Apparently their solutions should only be used for "good", or not being evil or something and Pentagon is clearly "evil" in their eyes.

Google has partnered with the United States Department of Defense to help the agency develop artificial intelligence for analyzing drone footage, a move that set off a firestorm among employees of the technology giant when they learned of Google's involvement.

Google's pilot project with the Defense Department's Project Maven, an effort to identify objects in drone footage, has not been previously reported, but it was discussed widely within the company last week when information about the project was shared on an internal mailing list, according to sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the project.

Google's Eric Schmidt summed up the tech industry's concerns about collaborating with the Pentagon at a talk last fall. "There's a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly," he said. While Google says its involvement in Project Maven is not related to combat uses, the issue has still sparked concern among employees, sources said

Project Maven, a fast-moving Pentagon project also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT), was established in April 2017. Maven's stated mission is to "accelerate DoD's integration of big data and machine learning." In total, the Defense Department spent $7.4 billion on artificial intelligence-related areas in 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Are the employees at Google starting to become a problem for Google and their eventual bottom line with their political agendas? Are they getting in the way of doing actual work? When or if is there such a line?

https://gizmodo.com/google-is-helping-the-pentagon-build-ai-for-drones-1823464533


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @09:42AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @09:42AM (#650474)

    I also want my work to do good, not evil. The difference is that I don't hate America. Censoring conservative voices on YouTube is evil. Discriminating against Asians and whites is evil. Displaying anti-American "fact checker" nonsense in front of factual conservative search results is evil. Finding excuses to hire H1B foreigners over Americans is evil. Purposely excluding American and Christian holidays from google doodles is evil, particularly when ones for other countries and religions are showcased.

    Remember to punctuate Google's old slogan correctly: "Don't. Be evil!"

    Since I support America and want to do good, I got a job with a defense contractor. We make bombs. We make a microwave beam weapon to zap people. We make an automated gun turret that aims and fires without human action. We supply cyberwar stuff. We have a giant 8x15 foot American flag at work, and we hold a flag folding ceremony every Veteran's Day. Some of us go shooting together.

    I love my job.
    'MURICA, FUCK YEAH!!!

    BTW, google search has been getting worse for a long time. It's now far worse than duckduckgo. Just switch. You can probably switch your browser by right clicking on the URL/search bar.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @11:40AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @11:40AM (#650497)

    Perhaps you should be using "Snowflake Search" or "Echo Chamber Search" or "If You Don't Agree With Me You Hate America Search".

    The fact is anyone who claims that those with differing views hate America are not true patriots. True Americans embrace the Constitution's 1st Amendment and understand that this melting pot we live in has been changing since it was founded.

    And before you start with your whataboutism just remember that you lost your chance to play that card as soon as you started condemning others with opposing views as unamerican.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @09:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @09:36PM (#650650)

    Censoring any voices on YouTube is evil. Discriminating against any humans is evil.

    There. FTFY.