More on Google and Military Drones A bit more of my thoughts on Google's military drone AI effort.
One issue that often comes up in such discussions is the difference between defensive vs. offensive technologies. I remember having discussions about topics like this at RAND many, many years ago (not drones of course, but tech efforts that ostensibly aimed at troop defense rather than offense, for example). The upshot was that in the final analysis, it was impossible to "wall off" one from the other. That is, tech designed for the former always ended up contributing to the latter, either directly or indirectly (I've had Pentagon types say this to me explicitly, explaining that this is part of why they fund what seem to be purely defensive efforts -- they know there will be an offensive side payoff). With image analysis and target identification, this connection seems even more direct. A counter-argument is that better target analysis could in theory help avoid civilian collateral damage. But I don't believe that is actually generally true in practice given the nature of the kinds of targets that drones are used again. These targets tend to be deep in civilian areas and travel with civilians (including children, other family members, etc., who typically have no choice about such matters). No drone-based image analysis can separate these. Pentagon planners for years have used drones for attacks with the explicit understanding that significant civilian losses are part and parcel of such attacks, and any tech that increases the viability of drone-based attacks will increase such losses. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lau...@vortex.com): https://www.vortex.com/lauren Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com Google Issues Mailing List: https://vortex.com/google-issues Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: https://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Google+: https://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list https://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad
