Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

Good, this idea that all weapons are evil is an insane luxury belief.

There is a wide range of moral and practical opinions between the statement “all weapons are evil” and “global corporations ought not to develop autonomous weapons”.

Tell Putin. He will entertain no such inhibitions.

We have Putin at home, he spent the past weekend making populist noises about annexing his neighbours over bullshit pretenses.

I'm sure this sounds like a big nothingburger from the perspective of, you know, people he isn't threatening.

How can you excuse that behaviour? How can you think someone like that can be trusted with any weapons? How naive and morally bankrupt do you have to be to build a gun for that kind of person, and think that it won't be used irresponsibly?

I understand the sentiment but the logical conclusion of that argument is that the US should disarm and cease existing.

The better logical conclusion of that argument is that the US needs to remove him, and replace him with someone who isn't threatening innocent people.

That it won't is a mixture of cowardice, cynical opportunism, and complicity with unprovoked aggression.

In which case, I posit that yes, if you're fine with threatening or inflicting violence on innocent people, you don't have a moral right to 'self-defense'. It makes you a predator, and arming a predator is a mistake.

You lose any moral ground you have when you are an unprovoked aggressor.

I'm not a fan of Trump but I also feel he has not been so bad that I think that surrendering the world order to Russia and China is a rational action that minimizes suffering. That seems be an argument that is more about signalling that you really dislike Trump than about a rational consideration of all options available to us.