Google is implementing Project Maven, a customized AI surveillance engine that uses “Wide Area Motion Imagery” data captured by US Government drones to detect vehicles and other objects, track their motions, and provide results to the Department of Defense.
Recently, Googlers voiced concerns about Maven internally. Diane Greene responded, assuring them that the technology will not “operate or fly drones” and “will not be used to launch weapons.” While this eliminates a narrow set of direct applications, the technology is being built for the military, and once it’s delivered it could easily be used to assist in these tasks.
That's from the letter sent to Sundar Pichai the other day
https://static01.nyt.com/files/2018/technology/googleletter.pdf
On the other hand, if it's going to happen anyway you might as well get some of the best people on it to minimise the risk of false positives.
ReplyDeleteWith all these open source AI tools there's little to stop me setting up shop using any of them for nefarious activities.
> and once it’s delivered it could easily be used to assist in these tasks.
ReplyDeleteThe same could be said about any of the technologies or research papers that Google publishes. And "easily be used" is bullshit. The entire point of hiring Google is that it's nontrivial to adapt AI to new applications at the moment. Not if you want to have reliability at the level of "Don't kill the wrong person".
All large tech companies work extensively with US military agencies. This is barely the tip of the iceberg.
ReplyDeleteFB's Peter Thiel is with Palantir, Amazon handles services for the CIA, & Google's Eric Schmidt is also involved in the Pentagon.