Around 10 years ago, in college, in Calculus class I had a very ambitious classmate, wanted to go to DARPA and work on Robotics. I asked if he was thinking it through solely from technical perspective or considering ethics side as well. Clearly, he didn't understand the question and I directly inquired - what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? His response - that's not my problem.
After spending couple of years studying in the US, I came to conclusion that executives and board members in industry doesn't care about society or humans, even universities don't push students towards critical thinking and ethics, and all has turned into a vocational training, turning humans into crafting tools.
The same time, at Harvard, I attended VR innovation week and the last panel discussion of the day was Ethics and Law, which was discussed by Law Professor, a journalist and a moderator and was attended a handful of people. I inquired why founders, CEOs or developers weren't in part of the discussion or in attendance? Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion. The discussion basically was - how product companies build affects the society? Laws aren't founders problem, that's what lawyers are for, and ethics - who cares, right?
This frenzy, this rat race towards next billion dollar company at any cost, has tore down the fabric of the society to the individual thinking level; or more like not thinking, just wanting and needing.
See in your case with the military you can directly say, hey my code will be used to bomb other people possibly. But in today's times it isn't (I am sure even then) so cut and dry. I worked in AdTech industry (like 60% of the bay area techies). So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kill them. Scam ads. Insurance ads and then people not getting cancer meds from the same insurance. Am I responsible for those deaths? I would say Yes.
But what is the option? I feel each of us wants to draw a line based off of our morality but the circumstances don't allow us to stick to it (still gotta pay rent)
We are all on a Titanic the way I see it. It's just the DARPA guy is gonna sink first. Rest of us are just pretending to be Jack trying to be the last ones to go.
> But what is the option? I feel each of us wants to draw a line based off of our morality but the circumstances don't allow us to stick to it (still gotta pay rent)
I was with you up to this point, but when you say "life is to hard to stay moral" I am thinking about how buying the wrong shampoo contributes to micro plastic in the ocean, or how buying a fitting jeans that is not exploiting labor is an extremely time intensive endeavor, or how avocados may be vegan but often produced unsustainable. Basically I thought you were making this point from The Good Place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lci6P1-jMV8 .
But when you are working in IT, an industry that is generally still very well of, avoiding an employer that is actively making the world a worse place, is a low bar to cross. It's just one decision every few years, which also is comparatively easy to research (you are probably doing it as your normal preparation for the job interview anyway) and the impact of that decision is enormous in comparison to most other decisions you make, so it's well worth it to ponder a bit.
Given the atomization and layering of work, this has become much harder to truly judge. Ten years ago I was excited to join a customer feedback platform - what could be better than helping companies understand their customers and provide better services and products? You can probably see where this is going, but inevitably the tools were just used to better tweak product profitability and eliminate end customer surplus, to the customer company’s benefit. And they were used by the likes of draft kings et al along with the Starbucks and Nikes of the world. I hear people claim that, in capitalism, no one hands are clean, and I am inclined to agree.
The option is to quit your job and go get a different one. It amazes me that people choose to work at Meta etc. I mean, it’s good for them, but they are choosing a bit more money whilst harming the rest of society. That’s a really bold move, to say that you just don’t care about other people.
Agreed. You can quit. That is always an option. "Gotta pay the bills" is definitely valid for some small subset of the us population but that certainly doesn't apply to software engineers in a hub like the bay or seattle. These people delude themselves into thinking they "must" have their ridiculous Meta pay to pay for their $2.5M house and their current lifestyle. Golden handcuffs and turn the blind eye to what they are doing.
> So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kill them. Scam ads. Insurance ads and then people not getting cancer meds from the same insurance.
Don't forget ICE and other government agencies using the bidstream data to track the location and behavior of immigrants, dissidents, etc, so they can be tracked down and arrested and sent to the gulag.
Well you cannot be responsible for adults' discernment or their critical thinking. If those same ads are being shown to children that would be different.
I don't see this as a binary thing. Legally we tend to draw a clear line between child and adult for pragmatic purposes, but I don't think my responsibility of intent disappears just because someone hits a magical number. I have steered clear of various gambling / "gaming" jobs which have had silly high salaries as a result; I don't in any way want to participate in things which are meant to play the weak points of the human psyche like a harp, for profit.
And it's a fallacy to assume that critical thinking is something that you're born with. In addition to the media landscape being completely ingrained into society. I can't really escape recommender engines anymore when consuming media.
If your exposure to media is curated since you were born, how are you going to tell if you're being deceived? It's pretty much the allegory of the cave.
There are forms of advertisment that are not so bad and there is a need for kill devices since there are lots of other existing kill devices. But this ad technology and this actual war ministry who take pride in revoking all "woke shit" like "rules of engagement" - I would not work for. There is other work, even if it pays less, but money ain't everything.
Oh if you are looking for dirt, you can find dirt allmost anywhere, but im gemeral I do see a difference in making a website for a kindergarten, vs applying the most efficient tech to track and target children with manipulative ads.
> "The fact is that a mere training in one or more of the exact sciences, even combined with very high gifts, is no guarantee of a humane or sceptical outlook."
>” I inquired why founders, CEOs or developers weren't in part of the discussion or in attendance? Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion.”
This seems more like credentialist arrogance than a well-reasoned judgment.
Nothing has destroyed my faith in humanity more than the frantic race to the bottom of the AI insanity the last couple years. You can feel the frenzied greed in the air, masses of investors piling over each other to get a piece of the golden pie at any cost. It’s fucking disgusting.
Which is why on a human level I have zero respect for many CEOs. The world would be a better place without them and they are actively working on making it worse. In fact I believe the rest of the tribe should punish them for this anti-social behavior to disincentivize it in the future.
The one industry that people dislike that I haven’t been in is war. I hope to be in weapons one day. The ethics are pretty straightforward to me: kill as few as possible to protect your interests; and that may be many people; but it is not really that many people.
Anyway, I won’t guess at your friend’s motivation but if you gave me the ability to make America’s industry better at prosecuting war you’d better believe I’d do it with great enthusiasm.
Besides I’ve been around long enough to know that when the rubber hits the road the ethical people will find their way rapidly to the Paradox of Tolerance and suddenly find that violence is highly desirable. I find this kind of high variance behaviour is undesirable and leads to unhappiness all around.
What if a new weapons technology was developed by an adversary but not developed by your country. Then it was used to attack and perhaps conquer your country? Or cause an unduly higher number of casualties due to disparity of force?
There is no such thing as “qualified”. The engineers actually doing the work definitely get a seat at the table, otherwise it’s an academic circle jerk detached from reality.
I think right now US warships are rather close to China than the other way around, so in china they can say, see, they are close to us, we need weapons and military training already in schools.
This is not about self defence, it is about dominance and raw power.
Oh? Name them, with receipts for actions taken, not vague gestures towards morality.
The actual logical end point of most of the 'for the good of humanity' folks in the bay area is:
'Only I can be trusted with the money, power, and weapons that I believe will break the world, but I promise it is for the best. No system or power should hold me to account in the event I am wrong or change my mind. Trust me.'
> what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing?
This line of thinking, that creating machines that kill is unethical, will destroy the West. If the US wasn't so good at producing killing machines in WW2, you wouldn't be here to complain about DARPA ethics.
Instead of having engineers develop the most advanced machines for killing (i.e. protecting the West) such people go into producing the most addictive content delivery systems, destroying the brains of minors.
We’re the bad guys. We were only the “good guys” for like 4 years in the 1940s and we still did internment camps. Everyone is costing off that 80 year old aura to justify a death machine.
If you think this is bad, have you noticed fast food? It's engineered to be addictive, the cause of obesity and diabetes epidemics, and they're allowed to advertise everywhere.
What is it about gambling that people find bad while other advertising for harmful stuff gets a free pass?
the outsize harms of gambling, financial ruin that is highly individualized, highly destructive, and particularly devastating. there are obviously significant public health costs from fast food, but its destruction does not present the same way.
>And if you’re dead set against Apple devices, you should check out the web version of Hacktivate – it’s not as powerful or as fun, but it’s entirely web-based and free!)
Here in the Netherlands, the government gave them away for free
They're also illegal because you're not allowed to film public spaces without a good reason (it's up to the judge and case law to decide, e.g. if there has been arson in the area recently then it's reasonable to monitor your car that's parked at the kerb, for example). Nobody has yet gotten in trouble to my knowledge
That the government gave them out has me wondering, do they make any kind of distinction between “government does it” versus “you doing it,” i.e. is the government claiming to be monitoring and not you?
In America we have this concept that a police must have a real reason to pull over your car. Except they can just setup an arbitrary checkpoint and pull every driver over and this is magically different and acceptable to do, no violations of rights at all.
I think cops here can pull anyone over any time for a check of driver's license and car papers, also outside of a checkpoint. To look in your trunk or do other actions, they need suspicion though, but that's extremely easily obtained ("I smelled weed" is unfalsifiable as a subjective opinion). They also have discretion: they can see your license expired last week and send you on your merry way with a warning afaik (bad crimes is where they have to act, like conspiracy to murder as an obvious example). Of course, this is most likely with a good excuse (if you have your route navigation device already set to the office where you can renew your licence, say). It goes too far to say that we like cops here (especially people with any amount of pigment are always (among) the chosen ones in random checks afaik), but police are portrayed a positive force that's there to make things better in general and that's I guess why we trust them to be reasonable and use their best judgment to find a solution when each situation is different. Some parties (that usually also happen to be racist) would love to tear this down with more shows of force by police, and harsher and minimum punishments that judges (the third "independent" govt branch) then can't override anymore per case. This is scientifically proven to be not just ineffective but actually countereffective, but who needs science when you can have rhetoric? With them being the biggest two parties now, with the next one the polar opposite, it's looking bleak for justice in the Netherlands' near future. Forget climate, I'm not even sure how to fight for the good things we already had :( Idk to what extent you found this interesting but I thought it could be an interesting window into how things are handled and going in our tiny corner of the world :)
As for the actual question (finally replying to your first paragraph now): sorta. GDPR has exceptions for law enforcement. Pretty broad ones for actual enforcement, iirc much less so for e.g. a statistics bureau or random other government services. If the municipality wants to put up a camera in the busiest places, I think they can use the same argumentation as a private person about their need being greater than people's privacy there, and I'd imagine a judge or privacy agency are more likely to accept it because it's less likely to be abused (the people monitoring the cameras are bound by rules that the organisation makes, and not personally involved) and that changes the up-/downsides analysis. You, the govt, and businesses always need to hang a sign, also on private property (to avoid someone spies on housemates or guests), afaik a judge needs to stamp when a camera needs to be placed secretly somewhere for a defined duration and purpose
So like it just came with the houses as they were built? If that's the case I wonder what kind of deal Ring make with the builders of new neighborhoods.
Yes, they were new build. They used it as part of the marketing too, calling them “smart homes”. There’s various other ring bits like motion detector and window/door sensors, alarm, etc. and some non-Amazon stuff like smart water meter, garage door opener.
They had some kind of deal with Amazon surely because it came with some amount of time free.
Agreed. Ring has a proven track record of giving up whatever video law enforcement wants, regardless of your choice or privacy laws.
If it was free, I could almost understand. Nothing is free, and if it cost the customer nothing, then the customer is the product. However, people paid for Ring gear and as a thanks have their privacy violated with no notice, no info and no choice.
It always was, but the reason it was successful is because it was good at it. The last two years have been a hot mess of them cramming shit in, an attempt to be "sticky". The thoughtful approach they used to take is gone.
After spending couple of years studying in the US, I came to conclusion that executives and board members in industry doesn't care about society or humans, even universities don't push students towards critical thinking and ethics, and all has turned into a vocational training, turning humans into crafting tools.
The same time, at Harvard, I attended VR innovation week and the last panel discussion of the day was Ethics and Law, which was discussed by Law Professor, a journalist and a moderator and was attended a handful of people. I inquired why founders, CEOs or developers weren't in part of the discussion or in attendance? Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion. The discussion basically was - how product companies build affects the society? Laws aren't founders problem, that's what lawyers are for, and ethics - who cares, right?
This frenzy, this rat race towards next billion dollar company at any cost, has tore down the fabric of the society to the individual thinking level; or more like not thinking, just wanting and needing.
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