Google staff resign in backlash over its AI contracts with military

Posted by saikatsg 19 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by pantsforbirds 15 hours ago

So 2 engineers are named, both had pretty splashy blog posts, and Liguori appears to have timed her resignation with the release of two big interviews as well.

Neither Liguori, nor Kirsch are American citizens. From what I can tell, neither even worked in America.

I guess I don't see how this is news worthy? Would anyone care at all if two American engineers quit their tech jobs because the Canadian or Japanese militaries were contracting their product?

Comment by janalsncm 14 hours ago

> I guess I don't see how this is news worthy?

At the risk of being overly reductive, a story is newsworthy if the editor decides it is. So one question you could ask is, why did the BBC editor think this was newsworthy?

Comment by lioeters 13 hours ago

Exactly. The purpose of news is not to inform you. It's to present you with a view of the world carefully curated to shape your beliefs. The BBC is notorious for their biases, but all major media channels serve the same purpose.

When they use the word "killed" (actively, by whom) or "died" (passively as if by chance), when they choose to highlight an event, downplay it, or ignore it altogether - the deeper question is not about the event itself, but the motivation behind its presentation. What do they want you to believe?

Comment by pantsforbirds 11 hours ago

I mean I'm just some dev so I'm far from a media expert, but wouldn't a story focused on the AI in warfare itself be vastly more interesting than 2 Non-American dev's who quit over it?

Comment by bad_username 8 hours ago

> I guess I don't see how this is news worthy?

BBC hasn't been "news" for quite some time now.

Comment by DroneBetter 15 hours ago

well the Canadian and Japanese militaries are not engaged in imperialistic wars of terror currently

Comment by utternerd 16 hours ago

So 2 people are referenced in the article by name and Google has what, almost 200k employees?

Comment by rekttrader 16 hours ago

At least 2 less with morals and spines

Comment by readthenotes1 14 hours ago

If they had morals and spines they never would have worked there to begin with. Google has been doing evil for quite a while.

I suspect that they now have morals and spines and wealth.

Comment by thepryz 14 hours ago

Be honest. There aren’t a lot of companies with a moral compass these days. If you want a job, and you’re not working for yourself,’the odds are likely you’re working for an evil company.

Comment by onemoresoop 15 hours ago

Last 2

Comment by GeekyBear 15 hours ago

The last two non-evil employees at Google.

Comment by DivingForGold 14 hours ago

Screw BBC's NagScreen, just use wallhop.io

https://wallhop.io/https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmreyve...

Comment by thereader12 17 hours ago

So, apparently the bbc has started charging Americans.

Comment by IncreasePosts 16 hours ago

You must not read much BBC if you're just noticing this(not that there's anything wrong with that). It's been this way for over a year at this point.

Comment by lenerdenator 16 hours ago

Are you saying that the BBC, which is an institution of His Majesty's Government, is issuing taxation upon Americans without representation?

Comment by cheschire 12 hours ago

Representation was one of the sliders defaulted to “off” in the cookie banner.

Comment by lenerdenator 12 hours ago

Hmmmm.

It's pretty late, but I think I'll be able to find an open grocery store that sells Yorkshire Tea so that I can dump it into a body of water.

Comment by esseph 15 hours ago

Tally, ho!

Comment by stickfigure 16 hours ago

This kind of extreme pacifism is exactly what Putin and Xi are hoping for.

Comment by IX-103 15 hours ago

Probably not, for all that America seems to be taking their side.

Comment by janalsncm 14 hours ago

The workers don’t seem to be pacifists. They seem to be opposed to some combination of genocide, autonomous weapons, privacy, or the military industrial complex.

Checks and balances on the ability to wage war are not a bad thing, and given the popularity of the US’ most recent entanglement I’d imagine most Americans would prefer more checks, not fewer.

Comment by mieses 7 hours ago

"the workers" lol

Comment by Supermancho 15 hours ago

The resignations do not translate to pacifism. In regards to the worker-workplace relationship, it's a confrontational maxim.

Comment by oxcartctl 16 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by 150g2 18 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by readthenotes1 14 hours ago

I'm surprised that they did not resign in backlash from how behind Google has become in the AI domain