[throwaway287391]

> If not, the pentagon would simply fund a new silicon valley in virginia and the surrounding area.

I'm skeptical that the military would be able to recruit AI talent in significant numbers. There's a fairly strong cultural opposition to military applications among AI researchers. Between that and the comp packages they're getting to work at "cool" companies (i.e. consumer or pure research focused), the cost for the military to draw them away from that seems like it would be prohibitively high. Especially if they're also asking them to move away from SF/NY to somewhere "boring" like Virginia. Isn't the military pretty limited in how much they can pay?

[xamuel]

>Isn't the military pretty limited in how much they can pay?

The AI researchers wouldn't literally be soldiers. They'd be contractors, side-stepping the pay limitations.

That said, military grunts would be perfect for the bootstrapping needed for some applications. "Manually label these one million images? No problem!"

[reacweb]

I think that one of the cultural opposition to military applications is the presence of NDA. I think all NDA shall be limited in time. There should be also a law so that NDA not limited in time or with an exagerate time limit are void. The other main opposition is moral, but I think this is a bad reason. If all the people with morality refuse to work on military project, this means that all the projects will be managed by sociopaths. If you do not want your army in the hands of sociopaths, it is a duty to accept working on military projects.

[throwaway287391]

> The other main opposition is moral, but I think this is a bad reason. If all the people with morality refuse to work on military project, this means that all the projects will be managed by sociopaths. If you do not want your army in the hands of sociopaths, it is a duty to accept working on military projects.

You're probably right, but I think for a lot of people who aren't the super patriotic type, it's just easier to work in private industry without any direct military interactions and not feel as much obligation to think hard about the ethics of the tech they're creating. Of course, there is a lot of discussion about the ethics of big private tech firms lately (and rightly so), but as far as just being able to tell your peers what you do in mixed social settings, there simply aren't as many people who would immediately recoil if you tell them you work at Snapchat vs. the Pentagon, right or wrong. And yeah, that's a morally weak and bad reason to choose private industry, but I suspect that something like it is a big part of the motivation for many people nonetheless.

[ojbyrne]

DC is a pretty fun city. And if we’re comparing to Virginia suburbs, Silicon Valley isn’t exactly exciting.

[throwaway287391]

Yeah, I actually agree. But I wrote "boring" with the quotes because I think that's the common perception among young engineers/researchers.