[amazingamazing]

It is honorable but ultimately hasn’t democracy spoken wrt the issues mentioned in the post?

For better or worse millions of Americans voted for the guy doing the deportations.

I also find it difficult to reconcile not using AI for weapons. If war is inevitable AI presumably would at least ensure you are on target.

[metalsiliconYT]

Agreed, I feel like the people who say no to AI weapons haven't actually presented a real argument (that I have heard) besides terminator bad

[ryandrake]

Regardless of whether AI is involved, many people simply don't want to work on weapons systems, or on non-weapons technologies that are intended to become part of a weapons system.

[metalsiliconYT]

Thats fine, but a serious luxury belief IMO

[watwut]

Not really, it is fairly common belief. And American war system is not in the pro-democracy, defense only or whatever else business anyway. It is in pro-warcrime, pro-stupid-wars, pro-dictators business.

[tediousgraffit1]

I think there's some nuance here that a lot of these convos dont make plain - are we talking about just using 'ai' in the military broadly, or are we specifically talking about fully autonomous weapons systems?

In the former case, I would agree with you completely, I havent heard any arguments beyond 'I dont like working on military stuff'. But if we're talking fully autonomous weapons, that's a different story. And further muddying the waters is the fact that the former is obviously a step along the path to the latter.

[slowin]

AI helps people scale. If being "on target" means that you find people when they're eating dinner so you can kill their entire family, then using AI to scale that up is a terrible thing. That's exactly what Israel did with Lavender. They literally had a kill list called "Where's daddy?".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245

[amazingamazing]

As opposed to what though? Again, I assert violence is inevitable.

[slowin]

AI is the end of the funnel and I actually think the mass surveillance at the beginning of the funnel is a bigger issue. The concentration of power is the problem. If you or I could defend ourselves against state level actors with AI weapons, then they would be a good thing (imho). AI and mass surveillance at the state level create a power imbalance that is a major threat to human rights and should be resisted as much as possible.

[scarecrowbob]

When folks who live around me vote for things I find unethical, then I don't feel bound by those decisions.

Also, your position on weapons development is premised on the idea that at lease some of the folks developing the weapons are on your side and always will be.

That might not be true at all.

[watwut]

This idea that once a party gain a little more votes, people who oppose it should cease to exist and cease push for own values ... somehow applies only to the right.

When center or left wins, somehow, magically, same logic dont apply.

[amazingamazing]

What a weird strawman

[watwut]

Literally you "It is honorable but ultimately hasn’t democracy spoken wrt the issues mentioned in the post?"

[sfink]

> For better or worse millions of Americans voted for the guy doing the deportations.

Uh, the idea of democracy is not that voting reveals universal preferences or something. It is ok to disagree with whoever gets elected, and continue working towards an alternative you believe to be better. In fact, democracy depends on that; otherwise, why not have a single election with no term limits? There is supposed to be ongoing difference of opinion.

> I also find it difficult to reconcile not using AI for weapons.

You can't reduce "AI for autonomous lethal weapons" to "AI for weapons".

[Chance-Device]

It does appear to be anti-democratic given everyone knew Trump’s platform when he was voted in. However the great unifying fact of politics is that everyone only really believes in democracy when they win.

[fulafel]

Same goes for Putin's policies of course.