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Apologies, but it would be good to add links for your anecdotes.

Not all of the readers of your comment have the appropriate context and know what you're talking about. I certainly don't.

I salute you for your morality. If most people did this, those companies would change their position very quickly. After all, they only think about money.

Respect!

"You're absolutely right, that wasn't a military target—it was actually a girls school. It won't happen again!"

I realize that's not a great argument and was definitely tongue-in-cheek, but given there's still a lot of debate about the accuracy of AI for far more mundane tasks, my personal perspective is that until we have LLMs and such that are truly, demonstrably far more accurate than humans, with true reasoning and judgement capabilities, they don't belong where lives are at stake.

I wouldn't want an LLM-underpinned machine running anesthesia during a surgery; why would I want an LLM-underpinned military apparatus that is deciding the lives of far more? I wouldn't, not in their current state.

In a hypothetical future where we truly trust incredibly smart AIs or LLMs or whatever "smart" technology it is for driving weaponry, okay - if it's truly necessary; I abhor war and the death and destruction wrought by it.

In my mind, though - even if we get to that future where there's some vastly superior technology to the LLMs we have today, which can judge and reason, then I'll have a bunch of other questions, like understanding the motivations of said technology, because I suspect it'll be something much closer to AGI, and that opens a whole separate can of philosophical worms.

Mainly I don't want them because I don't want a machine instantly making life or death judgements. It might be fine if it mostly informs a human who ultimately pulls the trigger, but having that failsafe is important in keeping machines from going on killing sprees.

I also want people to be held accountable when they do unjustified killings. AI weapons make it FAR too easy to simply pass off a killing as a "woopsie doodle." It's just not acceptable to say "The algorithm made a mistake, version 23 will do better".

I don't have a problem with the AI providing additional information to it's user, but when that's incorporated into a weapon it's a short distance from that to completely automating the killing.

That's why I'm completely against AI weapons.

>Just out of curiosity though why do people not want smart AI weapons?

When the decision to kill another human being is made that should be in the hands of a directly accountable other human being, not an unaccountable machine developed in the basement of a private corporation.

And mines, both dumb and smart, in particular anti-personell mines are banned by the Ottawa treaty ratified by 162 countries. It's exactly the autonomous and fundamentally uncontrollable nature of mines, not just that they're dumb, that has produced countless of casualties long after wars were over. Can you tell me that millions of autonomous loitering munitions are not going to end up exactly like those mines still blowing legs off people decades after conflicts are over? And who is responsible then?

They aren’t training smart AI weapons to discriminate between civilians and soldiers. Even so, what happens when the soldiers are disguised as civilians? Or when the enemy forces civilians to serve or be a decoy?

Because it's going to be used in any possible way, and certainly not for the good of the people, as imply in your "naive" false dichotomy.

Only when the bank account reaches 7 - 8 figures.

Michael is some marketing guy who used to work for Uber and now chose, voluntarily, to work for Trump - and gets to cosplay at being "Undersecretary for War". Why would anyone believe anything that such a person says?

And this "might happen on the 30 minute clock of an ICBM" is just another variation on the Ticking Timebomb "if you only knew what I know" forcing-function that gets deployed all the time by these brave warriors.

That doesn't address the supply chain risk designation? Or the ban on all work with claude for contractors, incl. non-government work?

Even if they disagreed, this was clearly retaliatory for not capitulating. The government could have just decided to go with a different provider.

I cannot think of a less trustworthy source of information than Emil Michael on the All-In podcast. Why on Earth would you take his statements at face value? I grant that nobody in this situation is totally trustworthy, but if it's his word against Dario's I'm believing Dario 10 times out of 10, and it's astonishing and dismaying that anyone might do otherwise.

Keep in mind that Emil Michael's job at Uber was to slander and destroy their political enemies. What makes you think he hasn't continued exactly as before?

Wait. Do you trust what he said?

I saw it on the front page.

It is not about courage or confidence, it is more a calling, where few are called and that often turns out to be just one person, or so it seems, since everyone finds their excuse to not take a stand against the oppressor and for the oppressed.

The author will have experienced every logical fallacy and TurnTrout has done well to document his efforts, rather than just the crimes of his adversaries.

A calling of conscience is hard to articulate initially, it is conscientious objection, to the war machine and the system of finance that necessitates the empire that needs the war machine.

The author starts off with a high degree of authority in that he actually worked for Google Deepmind, however, nobody will listen to him, so he has to seek higher authority to carry the truth forward. But he could have gone to the pope, anyone short of Jesus Christ (freshly teleported back) and it will be a no, everywhere.

Logic and reason does not help when insanity and money have taken over, which tends to happen during wartime.

The conscientious objector may not believe in god, however, they will consider themselves answerable, 'vain' enough to care about their legacy. There is that desire not to be found out, doing the 'devil's work', generally in workplaces where everyone is glad to get on with the 'devil's work'.

Why do so few people make a stand? Why didn't hordes of five-eyes people walk out the day after Snowden did his good deeds?

It varies by individual, however, the author is vegan, which means he has already 'dared to be Daniel, dared to stand alone', albeit only in a lunch queue in a meat eating world. This requires living according to principles, and serves as target practice for war-time conscientious objection.

Also important is a certain level of independence, the guy with a mortgage and a couple of kids, underwater on the car, with maxed out credit cards cannot conscientiously object. Nor can the guy counting down the last few years to retirement, and then the very young lack the articulation.

Only a few have the 'warchest' to embark on an open-ended single-person campaign to confront power with the truth. We owe a lot to these people, particularly the 'failed whistleblowers' that don't make it to 'whistleblower' status, because the media then makes the story about their situation, not what they conscientiously objected to. Props and respect to the author for documenting his journey and taking the first step.

Note the 'first step' is classic 'hero's journey', where the call is initially rejected, but then a journey into the extraordinary world is made, where the challenge is to bring back what is good from the extraordinary world to the ordinary world, for the benefit of all.

Saying AI military products wont work is the dumbest thing i've heard in awhile

Competitors often wish they didn't have to compete.

For example, a cartel is "a group of independent market participants who collaborate with each other and avoid competition in order to improve profits and dominate the market"

It's something that could happen in this world, through the collective action of employees, that corporate strategy can be changed.

apple and google are regularly on the same side against eu regulations

On the upside, I guess maybe DeepMind is hiring.

... I'm sure I'll get flamed into oblivion for this but it's weird to me how the zeitgeist is anti-colonialism but also against enforcing borders and national sovereignty. I guess maybe they are okay with it unless you're a western nation. Whatever, there's no room for nuanced opinions anymore in modern online discourse.

I'll admit to being a weird outlier on this. I may not like what certain parts of the government are doing but I'd go work for the Voldemort companies in a heartbeat -- they just require in-office and aren't anywhere near me. I'd rather my nation develop the best technologies than let other nations do it.

Just look at how far behind the eurozone is by not making the right investments.

I mean - the idea that any company employing non-trivial amounts of people "cares" in any sane sense of the word "care" is absurd.

Who is supposed to "care" about you? A single person, definitely not the CEO, is going to individually care about 20k+ workers, especially not 200k+ workers.

Even if you assumed an altruistic HR department, it's still going to be a faceless blob when you're a 100k+ company.

If half of us were half as principled as this guy, the world would be a much better place.

tldr: scientist tell us that defending one's values needs courage and strong will.

This is pretty different - in both of those, the officer faced consequences. Unidentified masked ICE officers have killed about a person a month with no consequences, many times over a civil concern (immigration status) or just getting annoyed with protesters who broke no laws. ICE is effectively a lethal extrajudicial force with no means of seeking accountability when they kill.

On top of that, they are acting aggressively and violently in broad daylight solely to terrorize immigrant communities. The chilling effect is very visible in hospital systems right now - I have seen far less Hispanics in the hospital for medical emergencies, and that includes people who are in this country legally.

IOW: "if I have to kill only 2-3 people to make the business I want to make, then, bah, so be it".

What are dishonest mischaracterization of the issue at hand, shame on you

your straw man is misrepresenting the scale of violence ICE has inflicted on communities across the country. the article states it was after Alex Pirettis death that he was inspired to act. ICE has killed many people across the country during activities which they have no business conducting. A man in Houston was killed last week, then days later, another in Maine. They’ve shot citizens and fabricated evidence to cover up their actions in multiple instances.

Wake the fuck up and stop trying to whatabout your way to a more comfortable mental state.

I don't hold it against people for only caring about one or two issues. In addition to many plausible explanations, people like OP who take a stand are already doing so much.

I for sure agree about encouraging people to dig deeper and wider, and that absolutely none of this is new or is occurring in a vacuum, but (and I don't say this to single you out, this is just a long-held feeling I've had) I do also think it's important to encourage and commend anyone who reaches these conclusions, however late or nascent they might be. Especially someone with the backbone to speak out at and then quit a cushy, prestigious job.

Something something every journey, something something single step. For the author (and for all of us, really) I hope it's one of many. And I think they should be proud of this particular step :)

The main answer would probably be: because he worked for Google Deep Mind as opposed to Google in general, so the killerbot and mass profiling concerns were immediately relevant to him and his work.

Your comment seems to be whataboutism. The article was not an essay trying to prove that he knows the secret to being maximally effective at politics, or whatever it seems you were expecting?

Agreed, I feel like the people who say no to AI weapons haven't actually presented a real argument (that I have heard) besides terminator bad

AI helps people scale. If being "on target" means that you find people when they're eating dinner so you can kill their entire family, then using AI to scale that up is a terrible thing. That's exactly what Israel did with Lavender. They literally had a kill list called "Where's daddy?".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245

> For better or worse millions of Americans voted for the guy doing the deportations.

Uh, the idea of democracy is not that voting reveals universal preferences or something. It is ok to disagree with whoever gets elected, and continue working towards an alternative you believe to be better. In fact, democracy depends on that; otherwise, why not have a single election with no term limits? There is supposed to be ongoing difference of opinion.

> I also find it difficult to reconcile not using AI for weapons.

You can't reduce "AI for autonomous lethal weapons" to "AI for weapons".

This idea that once a party gain a little more votes, people who oppose it should cease to exist and cease push for own values ... somehow applies only to the right.

When center or left wins, somehow, magically, same logic dont apply.

>AI presumably would at least ensure you are on target.

That is a big presumption.

It does appear to be anti-democratic given everyone knew Trump’s platform when he was voted in. However the great unifying fact of politics is that everyone only really believes in democracy when they win.