<story><title>A dozen Google employees quit over military drone project</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/05/google-employees-resign-in-protest-of-googlepentagon-drone-program/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manfredo</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;If ethical action on the part of tech companies requires consideration of who might benefit from a technology and who might be harmed,&amp;quot; the letter reads, &amp;quot;we can say with certainty that no topic deserves more sober reflection—no technology has higher stakes—than algorithms meant to target and kill at a distance and without public accountability,”&lt;p&gt;My understanding from the reading I&amp;#x27;ve done is that this project is to analyze drone video after it&amp;#x27;s collected, to automate tasks like picking out when people enter and exit buildings and to read the license plates off cars. If that understanding is correct then this quote seems disingenuous. Google&amp;#x27;s project is no more designed to &amp;quot;Target and kill at a distance&amp;quot; than the designers of the drone&amp;#x27;s camera, or it&amp;#x27;s engine. Arguably even less than those, since those components are in use when drone actually launches strikes. Google&amp;#x27;s project only comes into play after drones have returned and they have time to crunch the data.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davesque</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s an argument.  The truth is, even if the particular applications of AI to tasks like this are innocuous in this case, they&amp;#x27;re less than a stone&amp;#x27;s throw away from things that aren&amp;#x27;t.  Uses like this for technology are a perfect example of things we (we, the tech community, who have always prided ourselves on being more fair and ethical than the rest of the world) all promised we would &lt;i&gt;never do&lt;/i&gt;.  There is no more of a perfect mis-application of AI tech than to military uses.  It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if the military is currently only &amp;quot;counting people&amp;quot; in video footage.  We all know exactly where it will eventually lead.  Counting people will turn into finding people.  Finding people will turn into killing people.  We can&amp;#x27;t mince words in our condemnation of this activity.</text></comment>
<story><title>A dozen Google employees quit over military drone project</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/05/google-employees-resign-in-protest-of-googlepentagon-drone-program/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manfredo</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;If ethical action on the part of tech companies requires consideration of who might benefit from a technology and who might be harmed,&amp;quot; the letter reads, &amp;quot;we can say with certainty that no topic deserves more sober reflection—no technology has higher stakes—than algorithms meant to target and kill at a distance and without public accountability,”&lt;p&gt;My understanding from the reading I&amp;#x27;ve done is that this project is to analyze drone video after it&amp;#x27;s collected, to automate tasks like picking out when people enter and exit buildings and to read the license plates off cars. If that understanding is correct then this quote seems disingenuous. Google&amp;#x27;s project is no more designed to &amp;quot;Target and kill at a distance&amp;quot; than the designers of the drone&amp;#x27;s camera, or it&amp;#x27;s engine. Arguably even less than those, since those components are in use when drone actually launches strikes. Google&amp;#x27;s project only comes into play after drones have returned and they have time to crunch the data.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jadell</author><text>The response to that is in the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; While a Google spokesperson says the program is &amp;quot;scoped for non-offensive purposes,&amp;quot; a letter signed by almost 4,000 Google employees took issue with this assurance, saying, &amp;quot;The technology is being built for the military, and once it&amp;#x27;s delivered, it could easily be used to assist in [lethal] tasks.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If the object and intent recognition is made fast enough, and is able to be sent to and from a drone in flight, then the technology can be re-purposed offensively, regardless of its initial purpose.</text></comment>