We work for Google. Our employer shouldn't be in the business of war

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/google-ceo-drones-ai-war-surveillance

by omnimus • 8 years ago

62 69 8 years ago

tapatio2• 8 years ago

You are not forced to work at Google. Go work somewhere else.

not sure why you're getting downvoted for this. Those working for Google (or any large Silicon Valley firm) are usually among the top in their league and should be able to decide where they want to go based on their ideals/values, not because they have no other choice. Compared to the gazillions of engineers out there who are part of a 2nd or even 3rd party outsourcing chain (on crap salary and without rights in the company), Google employees are there because they want to. If the general opinion (in light of what we learned) now shifts towards a believe these companies are evil (which IMO they are) then I hardly feel sorry for the individual engineers. Googlers, Facebookers, Palantir guys should adapt and adjust or read "Who moved my cheese". Time for making these changes are now IMHO.

iraphael2• 8 years ago

They are also smart enough to know that their opinions matter within the company, and they can affect positive change. This open letter is one mechanism for doing that.

jstanley3• 8 years ago

Corollary to that is that they're not forced to work at Google. Google should work on ethical things if they want to keep their employees.

alslsls5• 8 years ago

There are plenty of future employees ready to fill the empty spots.

coldtea9• 8 years ago

They are also not forced to not voice their concern.

tapatio2• 8 years ago

Not necessarily. Case in point: James Damore.

archagon2• 8 years ago

There’s a lot of disconcerting “shut up and mind your own business” quips against these Googlers in this thread.

Whatever happened to standing up for what you believe in?

Density• 8 years ago

No sympathy for censorship or building a police state.

walshemj2• 8 years ago

yes and as google tracks more about the population does than any TLA and with zero oversight.

walshemj2• 8 years ago

Ok so 3000 signed it I bet in a secret ballot the vast majority of google employees are not bothered or are in favor

some_account• 8 years ago

Advice to Googlers: stop working there. You are the smartest dumb people I know. Much like Oppenheimer you are running around, thinking you are doing something good. Wtf?

AI, robotics and cloning are going to create a very, very bad world where people mean nothing. Google wants to run that world.

paulie_a• 8 years ago

Google is an ad company.

Let's not pretend it is anything more.

docdeek• 8 years ago

Missing from this letter is any indication of action if Google does not agree to the demands. Are these 3000 people going to quit? Somehow I feel it is unlikely.

em3rgent0rdr3• 8 years ago

Yeah. Sort-of like all those people that continually threaten to leave Facebook...

sremani• 8 years ago

This is a tough one, Google is walking into a semantic quagmire - how do you differentiate "business of war" from "protecting our troops/homeland". You are going to piss of one half of the country at least by even engaging in this debate.

The only Silicon Valley figure that would have veered out of this almost unscathed would have been Steve Jobs.

tazjin• 8 years ago

While Google is technically an American company, US citizens make up a minority of their user base.

How do you define "homeland" here? What if Google's foreign subsidiaries participate in project "Maven" in some way?

This doesn't seem "tough" to me at all.

drivingmenuts• 8 years ago

That's because Jobs built computers, not computers for the military, just computers. If they did wind up being used by the military, it was incidental, not because they were purpose-built for that.

Like Tim Cook, he wouldn't have let himself be in that position.

sureaboutthis3• 8 years ago

The problem with this thinking is that Google is not in the "business of war" but in the business of artificial intelligence. They have written an AI engine and a customer, the defense industry, wants to use it.

This is almost like people in the steel industry wanting to get out of this business of war by not selling or working on steel.

Another thing to note is, do these Googlers honestly think Russia and China and others aren't working on the same thing to be used by their military? Are these Googlers actively trying to persuade those countries not to work on this business of war at the same time?

kuschku2• 8 years ago

Google also has employees in different countries.

Would you be okay if your AI works as American ends up in the hands of the Russian military?

Why should a German, or French, or Russian Google employee then accept that their work ends up in the hands of the US military?

EDIT: Yes, they won’t directly work on the drone program – but the drone program will more likely than not be reusing ML technology built all across Google, and everyone that worked on that now knows they are personally helping the US military-industrial complex.

romanovcode• 8 years ago

Imagine if Russian Google workers are making something for US military? I'm pretty sure it would be considered treason under Russian laws.

wil4212• 8 years ago

You must not know how these things work. If they are working with the DOD they are probably American citizens on American soil. Especially if anything is classified, I’d put money AI is.

There was a video of Elon Musk talking about how they can only hire Citizens at SpaceX due to government restrictions. Same concept would apply to Google and DOD Work.

sarabande• 8 years ago

I don't think that's an appropriate analogy. If steel is the commodity in this example, then general AI techniques would be the analog for Google. Here, employees are complaining about a specific project working with the DoD, not generally working on AI:

"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."

sureaboutthis3• 8 years ago

The steel industry actively supplies the military with steel products for making ships and other things used in war.

avoutthere• 8 years ago

do these Googlers honestly think Russia and China and others aren't working on the same thing to be used by their military?

It's been my observation that vehement anti-war activists seem unwilling to admit that there are threats that need to be defended against.

weberc2• 8 years ago

Mine as well. More generally, I've often observed that when the status quo is imperfect, many people are willing to opt for a worse system so long as the imperfections are different (e.g., capitalism vs socialism).

coldtea9• 8 years ago

The problem with this thinking is that Google is not in the "business of war" but in the business of artificial intelligence. They have written an AI engine and a customer, the defense industry, wants to use it.

Well, they could still always refuse that.

cfelix• 8 years ago

Another thing to note is, do these Googlers honestly think Russia and China and others aren't working on the same thing to be used by their military? Are these Googlers actively trying to persuade those countries not to work on this business of war at the same time?

Some people don't want to take part in automated killing. It is not their duty to stop others.

sureaboutthis3• 8 years ago

And here they are doing just that.

gethesmane• 8 years ago

The problem with this thinking is that Google is not in the "business of war" but in the business of artificial intelligence.

Sorry, but this just spin. If you create product X specifically designed for and marketed to vertical market Y... then you're in the business of Y, period.

Not even Google's own product people would pretend to believe otherwise.

If they did - they wouldn't be doing their jobs.

coldcode• 8 years ago

And why would your leadership care what you say? I know how little the leadership in my company (almost as big) cares about causes when there is money to be made. CEOs are paid to make profits not care about doing good. They do good when they are retired and can spend all the money they made making money and not caring so much about good. Why do so many companies do business in China despite all the censorship and other pain they have to support? Money.

jedimastert• 8 years ago

I wonder if "Don't be evil" is still in their code of conduct...

alslsls5• 8 years ago

Pacifism is evil.

coldtea9• 8 years ago

Yeah, the untold victims of pacifism... oh, wait...

PurpleRamen• 8 years ago

It starts with them: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

em3rgent0rdr3• 8 years ago

Wow, they've sure watered-down "Don't be evil":

"Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can."

But what if your users belong to an organization known for doing bad?

"But [Don't Be Evil] is also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably"

But what if the law itself is evil? And what if you are acting honorably to further something evil?

alslsls5• 8 years ago

1. Companies are not democratic. 2. Being good at war is a good thing.

jstanley3• 8 years ago

Being good at war is a bad thing if it means you're likely to do more of it.

alslsls5• 8 years ago

I don't understand the way people can neglect history, and pretend that the world will live peacefully ever after from now on.

The world is relatively peaceful because the US is more powerful than all other nations combined.

I'm sure if you asked the people who signed it, they would think this is a bad thing too.

coldtea9• 8 years ago

1. Companies are not democratic

That's just how it is today, not some natural law. Companies can and have been democratic (e.g. coops and other such forms), and companies can be more democratic going forward if people want it so.

2.Being good at war is a good thing.

Not for the casualties -- and often not for the general population either. Would a better at war Nazi Germany be "a good thing"? Would a better at Vietnam US be?

kingkongjaffa2• 8 years ago

That's just how it is today, not some natural law. Companies can and have been democratic (e.g. coops and other such forms), and companies can be more democratic going forward if people want it so.

Wouldn't survivorship bias dictate that the most successful companies are the ones that are left over, i.e. not democratic > democratic in the business of surviving. Regardless of your ideals.

alslsls5• 8 years ago

companies can be more democratic going forward if people want it so.

Actually, they are democratic, but its the owners who have the vote, not the employees.

Would a better at war Nazi Germany be "a good thing"?

Yes, from the German perspective, because they wanted world domination.

fahadkhan3• 8 years ago

3. Being good at avoiding wars is a great thing.

(Which I believe is the intent of the signatories)

merricksb2• 8 years ago

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16755530, which is still in the middle of the front page after 21 hours, and links to the text of this letter.

omnimus• 8 years ago

Sorry didnt see that one.

But honestly it is not duplicate. But whatever.

merricksb2• 8 years ago

The HN policy seems to be that later posts on the same topic (even if they're different urls) will be considered duplicates, unless an article adds significant new information [1]. Otherwise you get discussion about the same topic split over multiple threads, leading to both repetition and incompleteness on each thread.

If you think this article contains significant new information, or that it is a better source than the earlier post and should be the one linked from that thread, you should email the mods – hn@ycombinator.com.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20significant%20new%20inf...

We work for Google. Our employer shouldn't be in the business of war

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