[monfrere]

Your discussion of "legality" here is U.S.-centric. Google has offices in Germany, France, Poland, Russia, Turkey, U.A.E., India, and China, to name a few. How would you feel if Google worked on military technology for those countries? Would you point out that it was inevitable that their militaries would seek ways to use A.I.? Would you point out that the Turkish armed forces' activities are permitted under Turkish law? Would you lament the inability of Google employees to separate work from politics?

Google has users in almost all countries, and even our friends in other liberal democracies do not see the U.S. military the same way we do. Perhaps some Google users' family members have even been killed by the U.S. military. This presents a perfectly reasonable business reason (one that has nothing to do with "the personal, the moral, the legal, and the political") for Google to turn down AI drone contracts.

[geodel]

I am from one of the country you listed above and it seems perfectly fine to me that Google comply with existing laws of respective countries even if they are in contradiction to US laws.

[monfrere]

FWIW, I am American, and I would absolutely object if Google were building weapons for the Chinese military. I would stop using Microsoft products if it turned out they supplied weapons for the Russian takeover of Crimea. I would delete my Twitter account if they were found to be building special-purpose propaganda tools to aid Turkey's Erdogan. Etc.

Complying with laws in another country is one thing. Working with a military, which necessarily has implications beyond that country's borders, is another. And of course even here there are different degrees. You can build a general-purpose secure email client and sell it to a country's military, or you can design their bombs. Where the line is I'm not sure, but at some point your activity is inherently violent, inherently adversarial to some fraction of people in the world.

[geodel]

I am more conflicted about at least one person I knew committed suicide because IT automation provided by Google eliminated his job. Or in general IT/industrial automation wreaking havoc on my highly populated but poor nation. Now is it just the price of progress as people here would say or should Google employees be held morally responsible for causing destruction of livelihood for many a people.

[nine_k]

I bet neither China, nor Russia, nor the US would allow foreign citizens in foreign countries develop any serious military technology for their armies. Even their own citizens would be checked in detail before being allowed to work on it.

If a technology is not under that kind of scrutiny, chances are its military applications are... far-fetched.

[fineline]

Lots of military technology is traded between countries all the time, tanks, planes, guns, boats, missiles, etc. China just bought a bunch of Su35 jet fighters from Russia.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/chinas-air-force-m...