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Pentagon says overreliance on AI contributed to missile strike on Iran school

974 points · 553 comments · devonnull

63 · 1790106616 · focus · HN ↗
It's easy to blame the military and the higher-ups, after all they made this choice. But more relevant to HN, this couldn't have happened without technology professionals working for Palantir.
> A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg the company “is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies” and that there is no evidence its software was at fault.
If you work for Palantir, you are writing software that kills people. Software that, in this case, killed 123 children. What salary is worth that?
I encourage others who work in the public sector, whether directly or through a contractor, to read and internalize Don't Get Distracted by Caleb Hearth [0]. I think about it nearly every day.
[0] <a href="https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted" rel="nofollow">https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
1. augment_me · 1790107628 · focus · HN ↗
  The govt is investing in the military whether you like it or not, there is a set amount of GDP going into the sector regardless of your moral choice.
  Would you rather not have someone make good software that does not misidentify schools at sites? Or should we outsource this to worse engineers who don't care about morals and don't find this metric meaningful?
  1. kelnos · 1790110909 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a reasonable argument, but I don't think I could make the decision to work on software that's designed to kill people. I consider myself a pretty good software developer, and yes, I could probably do a better job building software to help kill people than many others, but I don't think "if you don't do it, someone less capable will, and more innocent people will get killed" would sway me. I just don't want to be involved in that, and I'm lucky that I don't have to be.
    augment_me · 1790111672 · focus · HN ↗
    Well you made a personal choice to stick your head in the sand to not have to deal with the hard emotions, and that's fine. But to then pass judgement on people who don't sounds a bit unfair given this.
    mistercheph · 1790152498 · focus · HN ↗
    You stuck your head in the sand on this one buddy but I'm going to build the safest god-damned child torture machine possible because if I won't some jackass will that gets a child more hurt than they need to, sorry I don't live in your fantasy world of rainbows and sprinkles.
    ImPostingOnHN · 1790199968 · focus · HN ↗
    The people sticking their head in the sand to avoid hard emotions are the ones writing the people-killing software.
    Those who are aware of it, and choose not to, are the ones who have reckoned with those emotions and chosen not to participate in the killing of innocents.

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