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Comment by replicatorblog | Hacker News Reader

If you don't like what Amazon is building, just wait until all those contracts start going to Raytheon and Northrop! I appreciate the moral quandary these engineers are faced with, but there is something to be said for being a responsible steward of technology. I've met quite a few MIT Ph.D.s who nonchalantly mention their roles as, what sounds like to me like "Program manager for raining fire and destruction on third-world countries systems." Someone is going to write the code, I kind of hope it's done at companies like Amazon where there is some ability to publicly pressure management vs. defense contractors who are largely unaccountable to the masses.

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This really aligns with my thoughts too. I was sad to see Google pull out, because I know that with the ideology of many of the people there, the whistle is far more likely to be blown when things go too far. Having worked for big defense contractors, that whistle is not likely to get used there.

I get nervous as hell thinking about AI and ML in the hands of governments, but it's gonna happen anyway. I'd rather it be Google than Northrop.

>I'd rather it be Google than Northrop.

So would many of us here, but not Google itself. It is just terrible PR for any company that wants a decent public image. It is one thing to get grilled by senators, but entirely another for your average user to start believing you’re part of a war-machine, and thus something to be avoided. And the bulk of Google/Amazon’s profits come (directly/indirectly) from B2C markets, which makes their image/brand-value a significant intangible asset that cannot be compromised. Contractors don’t have this quandary.

>It is one thing to get grilled by senators, but entirely another for your average user to start believing you’re part of a war-machine

Tides can and do change though. And anyone working on anything that can be weaponized (see also self driving cars) and has heard of Alfred Nobel is just fooling themselves if they think they can control their creations.

> ... the whistle is far more likely to be blown when things go too far

In your admiration for a Google employees, you’re projecting your own beleifs and norms.

The whistle was blown; Project Maven is too far.

> I get nervous as hell thinking about AI and ML in the hands of governments

Me too, but a cleaner way to deal with it might be to demand better transparency and accountability from the government. Beleif that large corporations will act in your unstated best-interests (and not their own) seems pretty noisy.

It's definitely fair to point out that Google and their employees aren't likely to be the perfect representation of what I would hope for, but all I really meant to convey was that as an institution I trust them more than I do the big defense contractors. TBF, it's not a high bar to leap.

But isn't Maven and Rekognition people at these companies blowing the whistle? If they just did what was asked of them, then there would be no difference to other companies.

The reason we're hearing about this right now is that a lot of whistles are blown. The question is whether this will be effective in any way.

That's a very good point. The logical conclusion of what I said is that at some point the whistle gets blown (or already has as you've pointed out) at which point Google backs off and Northrop (or another defense co) takes over, and we're right back here.

You guys understand that Amazon and Google do not necessarily get access to these DOD projects, right? As in: if these protests keep recurring, these companies will simply not be invited to participate –– the classic defense contractors will. The large tech companies don't have as much agency as some of us seem to be assuming.

The pressure at Amazon, Google, etc. will be to not provide those tools to law-enforcement or government entities, though, which means that the contracts will wind up at defense contractors who don't operate with the same ethical beliefs. It's a Catch-22.

Ethical use doesn't matter once the government has their hands on it - government doesn't have ethics, it has politics.

Exactly. I don't understand the rationale behind these kinds of "protests". It's not like the buyer can't go elsewhere to get the tech. To potentially far less scrupulous suppliers at that.

The whole thing seems like virtue signaling.

I’ve never seen the rationale behind not going out drinking with my buddy, just because he beats his wife when he gets home. Whether I come to the bar or not, he’ll do it anyway!

Those who don’t come out with us any more are clearly doing it with the same intentions as everyone else that disagree with me; the wrong ones.

Wrong. Law enforcement and abusive husbands are not the same thing.

They're just correlated: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...

Think a little harder then. There are legitimate arguments on both sides.

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