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Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

(www.washingtonpost.com)
617 points jbegley | 1 comments | 04 Feb 25 20:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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a_shovel ◴[04 Feb 25 20:43 UTC] No.42938313[source]▶
I initially thought that this was an announcement for a new pledge and thought, "they're going to forget about this the moment it's convenient." Then I read the article and realized, "Oh, it's already convenient."

Google is a megacorp, and while megacorps aren't fundamentally "evil" (for some definitions of evil), they are fundamentally unconcerned with goodness or morality, and any appearance that they are is purely a marketing exercise.

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ninetyninenine ◴[05 Feb 25 03:05 UTC] No.42943178[source]▶
A megacorp is made up of people. So it's people who are fundamentally evil.

The main thing here I think is anonymity through numbers and complexity. You and thousands of others just want to see the numbers go up. And that desire is what ultimately influences decisions like this.

If google stock dropped because of this then google wouldn't do it. But it is the actions of humans in aggregate that keeps it up.

Megacorporations are scapegoats when in actuality they are just a set of democratic rules. The corporation is just a window into the true nature of humanity.

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1. anon373839 ◴[05 Feb 25 03:11 UTC] No.42943227[source]▶
You're half right. Corporations are just made of people. But, they're more than the sum of their parts. The numbers and complexity do more than provide anonymity: they provide a mechanism where individuals can work in concert to accomplish bad things in the aggregate, without (necessarily) requiring any particular individual to violate their conscience. It just happens through the power of incentives and specialization. If you're in upper management, the complexity also makes it easier to turn a blind eye to what is happening down below.