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Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

(www.washingtonpost.com)
617 points jbegley | 2 comments | 04 Feb 25 20:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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. energy123 ◴[05 Feb 25 03:18 UTC] No.42943269[source]▶
Not a useful framing in my view. People follow private incentives. Private incentives are by default not perfectly aligned with external stakeholders. That leads to "evil" behavior. But it's not the people or the org, it's the incentives. You can substitute other people into the same system and get the same outcome.
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2. ninetyninenine ◴[05 Feb 25 03:34 UTC] No.42943373[source]▶
Not useful, but ultimately true.

People have the incentive to not do evil and to do evil for money. When you abstract the evil away into 1 vote out of thousands then you abstract responsibility and everyone ends up in aggregate doing an inconsequential evil and it adds up to a big evil.

The tragedy of the commons.