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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: 0.681s | source
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gerdesj ◴[05 Feb 25 00:19 UTC] No.42941439[source]▶
Why on earth would a for profit company refuse a potential line of profit?

They already dumped "do no evil" many years ago and they are now all in on fuck the poor and fuck the rest: I'm making profits and all is fine.

Google makes money and they don't appear to care how - its all about the money.

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janalsncm ◴[05 Feb 25 00:54 UTC] No.42941850[source]▶
The problem with this is that if companies are just profit maximizers then one of the things it should do is to realign the government. After all, a friendlier government can help to decrease regulation and increase incentives.

Plus, in a healthy economy if everyone is bribing the government shouldn’t it all cancel out? Well it turns out the poor don’t bribe the government very often, so they are easily ignored.

And suddenly, when the government is co-opted into believing anything that gets in the way of “business” is bad, they figure out that money that could be spent on social services could also be spent on corporate tax incentives! Eventually the entire country becomes one big profit maximizer.

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danans ◴[05 Feb 25 06:48 UTC] No.42944811[source]▶
> The problem with this is that if companies are just profit maximizers then one of the things it should do is to realign the government

What do you think is happening right now?

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1. janalsncm ◴[05 Feb 25 19:11 UTC] No.42953546[source]▶
What is happening is the US is reaping what it sowed 45 years ago with Reagan-era privatization and short-term thinking. It is structurally incapable of executing plans which take more than 2-4 years. So any adversary can outmaneuver the US by simply planning on longer timelines.

Oh look, China has 5 year plans.

Of course the efficiency of a one party state comes at the cost of stability: there are no internal checks on corruption. A two party state is more stable (the US has lasted 240 years) but not infinitely stable.

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2. danans ◴[05 Feb 25 22:52 UTC] No.42956519[source]▶
But at this moment what's happening is that Capital is completing what Reagan started by finalizing the realignment of government totally toward its interests, at the expense of labor and the precariat. But sure, it all started a while back.