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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
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Saturday March 10 2018, @03:37PM (10 children)
Hey, this isn't about politics and it isn't about snowflakes. Not wanting your work to be involved in killing people is a legitimate position shared by people on all sides of politics. Many Christians, in fact, are pacifists. Where is the cry for their religious freedom to not have their work used to kill people?
Not saying you can't be a nationalist that thinks the American military-industrial complex is unambiguously good. But that is a more politically charged opinion than pacifism.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @06:07PM (5 children)
"Snowflakes" Is still an appropriate term. Unless you are also on the board, you don't get to dictate what your employer does. Don't like it? Go away.
You come to me and whine, i would fire your ass on the spot. Real men ( and women ) either do their job, or bow out and find another place to work. Snowflakes, whine about it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Saturday March 10 2018, @08:59PM (3 children)
FYI, even in the military which is all about chain of command, you can still be court-martialed even if you were following orders. You are responsible for your own actions, regardless of what your superiors may tell you to do. So don't give me this crap that I'm supposed to be a mere cog in the machine and never question "the board" (who may well be more interested in selling out the company for their own financial gain than in the lasting good of anybody working there).
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday March 10 2018, @09:48PM (2 children)
That's not even close to what AC said. Just as in the military (where this has happened repeatedly) or in appointed government positions (where it happens frequently too), if you cannot, in good conscience, support the actions of your superiors, then you *resign*. And hopefully make a lot of noise doing it too.
That's exactly what AC was advocating, and it's exactly what Google employees should do. If they don't support their employer partnering with the US DOD for this project, they should resign and explain as loudly as possible *why* they resigned.
No one is forcing anyone at Google to do *anything* that violates their conscience. There's no discrimination or coercion involved here.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @07:11PM (1 child)
The problem is more basic, IMHO. Good students who have gotten good grades all their life and worked hard, have their own cocoon and they become uncomfortable outside of it. The Big Tech loves these people, as they are docile and hard working and they in turn maintain that cocoon by hiring the same kind of people. Unfortunately, these people have very little place to go to. The
realrest of the world is quite difficult where a lot of other skills are required.Google's cocoon is all about no-evil-superiority complex, and this deals interferes from inside it.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 11 2018, @08:13PM
An interesting point. And perhaps that's true of some (many?) Google employees. But there are other companies that feature jobs where poor social skills, long hours and cocoon-like environments exist.
But even if there weren't, I don't have a lot of sympathy for those who would work on things that affront their conscience.*
Ethics and principles are valuable things. And if one doesn't value such things, that says a lot about a person's character.
I won't condemn folks who go that route, but I'm not likely to trust them either.
*I'm not making a value judgement as to what should or shouldn't affront any particular person's conscience.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @09:51PM
Except employees who believed Google's "don't be evil" motto get screwed. Holding people to their word, especially your employer, takes guts.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday March 10 2018, @10:30PM (1 child)
I think you've accidentally posted on the wrong story. This is the political story about snowflakes inside Google upset that their company got a government contract with the Pentagon.
Whether or not pacifism is good and right, or idealistic and deadly, or somewhere in between, doesn't have really anything to do with it. AI that puts flowers into the hair of noncombatants and helps them to not die is as arguably "good" as AI that helps evil warmongers kill, kill, kill is arguably "bad."
Now, which did Google sell here?
If the first, then the snowflakes might shut up and run along now.
If the second, then it's their own fault, and they should still shut up and run along now.
(Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Sunday March 11 2018, @03:28AM
"I think X"
"well you're wrong! And here's some unrelated commentary to prove it!"
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by jmorris on Saturday March 10 2018, @11:38PM (1 child)
All you have told the wise with that statement is that you believe that position so strongly that you don't think it is political. Whether a position is "legitimate" or not is entirely unrelated to whether it is also a political one. You are (unconsciously or cunningly) trying for the "My political position is beyond politics" gambit. Sorry Charlie, premise rejected. You guys popularized "The personal is political" and "everything is political" so too late trying to mark off some positions as outside of politics. If questions of War and Peace aren't political, if fight or surrender, build weapons or not, aren't political discussions then what passes for one in your definition? Whether we should be cutting the dicks off of six year olds?
Moving to the big picture this case illustrates the Impossibility of SJW Convergence. As any institution converges ever closer to the ideals of Social Justice it loses the capability of carrying out whatever original mission it had. Google can't even produce quality Evil anymore. The only division yet to feel the impact is the ad serving, probably because the advertisers are themselves already SJW converged to the point there is as yet no conflict between Google and the advertisers. In fact it is pressure from advertisers that is enabling the SJWs to swing the banhammer with such abandon.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Sunday March 11 2018, @04:19AM
My mistake. I meant political as in Democrat vs Republican, not political in the broader sense. Should have made that more clear.
Pacifism is not an inherently leftist position. It is more of an axis of its own that has historically been the providence of the very religious. At least until during the Vietnam war it also became the providence of young people who didn’t want to be drafted to slaughter civilians on the other side of the world for flimsy reasons.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?