Comment by verdverm

2 days ago

every change starts with a few people, and then it grows

Google is grandfathered into a few preexisting defense contracts. Any red lines you draw may have already been crossed.

  • Literally yesterday google changed how secrets work. Its very possible to introduce change.

  • Contracts expire and can be renegotiated, or even reneged on if you are willing to accept the consequences (which you may see as preferable to enabling wanton murder)

> every change starts with a few people, and then it grows

your opinion is defense contracts are bad

my opinion is defense contracts are good

who is correct? probably me since 99.9% of Googlers won’t leave over this

  • Thanks for informing me of my opinion on defense contracts /s

    Their goal is not to leave, it is to start a conversation that hopefully ends up changing company policy.

  • [flagged]

    • > if all your friends were jumping off of a bridge would you do it too?

      Probably.

      https://xkcd.com/1170/

      Although in the context of the parent comment, majority of Googlers probably aren't working on things directly related to controversial topics, instead they are probably working on mundane and non-external facing projects like "how do I migrate my libraries from this deprecated dependency to this other shiny new thing".

  • Why is there any controversy about defending one's nation being "good" or "bad"?

    I can not believe what I am reading here, and how the single comment supporting defending one's country is so heavily downvoted. Qatar has poisoned Western online communities such that all defence of the United States is considered taboo? I don't even live in the US and I am frightened by what I see here.

    • Oh I believe it’s important to defend the country, but not because it’s a popular opinion. I dislike any statement that believes truth is based on consensus.

    • The controversy isn't about defending one's country, it's about you and the parent comment author assuming what this is all about without reading the article.

      The core of the issue about autonomous use of AI in mass surveillance of Americans and autonomous use of AI in automated weapons that make kill decisions. Anthropic is perfectly fine with working with the War Department and "defending one's nation".

      But they are not okay with their AI being used to make a mockery of the 4th amendment and making automated kill/no-kill decisions about actual human lives.

      1 reply →

    • "Defending one's nation" and "capitulating to the people in charge like Hegseth" are very much not the same thing.