If Google Drops Project Maven, ‘Pentagon Will Try to Strike Back at Them’

[DamianTV]

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201...project-maven/

More than 3,000 Google employees sent a letter to Sundar Pichai, the company's chief executive, asking the internet giant to stop working on a project for the US military, it was revealed Wednesday.

The project the 3,100 employees rallied against is known as Project Maven and is intended to help improve the precision of military drone strikes.

"We believe that Google should not be in the business of war," the letter states. "Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology."

"This plan will irreparably damage Google's brand and its ability to compete for talent… By entering into this contract, Google will join the ranks of companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics," it added.

"Building this technology to assist the US government in military surveillance — and potentially lethal outcomes — is not acceptable."

​Speaking to Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear, web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa noted that the stance taken by the employees is "very unique."

"This is very unique and a very striking example that these 3,100-plus Google employees are sending right now," Garaffa told show hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou. "This is something extremely different to see: these employees, who rely on Google for a paycheck, standing up like this."

"I think this is straight and to the point: if 3,100 employees have the courage to sign on to this I can only imagine that there are many, many more who have been waiting for an opportunity like this and are observing to see what the response is before they sign on," he added.

But if Google ends up pulling out of the project, Garaffa suggested that the Pentagon will tap into its defense tactics and retaliate.

"I do expect that if Google does pull out of Project Maven or even makes any signal in that direction, there is certainly going to be a tweet from [US President] Donald Trump about it and Pentagon will try to strike back at them just like the FBI did when Apple refused to unlock the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter," Garaffa told Becker. "I certainly hope that we see more Google employees standing up to Google's collaboration with the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies as well."

Garaffa concluded that if more Google employees were to come forward, it would eventually "impose a real threat to the company in the eyes of the government."

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Full article on link.

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Yeah, cuz thats what we need. Google getting into the Warfare Business. Something about a warning about the Military Industrial Complex?

[timosman]

3100 may soon become aware of how the real world works.

[angelatc]

God I hate war.

[jmdrake]

What the? This is freaking Skynet!



https://www.defense.gov/News/Article...-by-years-end/
WASHINGTON --
Winning wars with computer algorithms and artificial intelligence were among the topics that Defense Department intelligence officials discussed during a recent Defense One Tech Summit here.

Pittsburgh-based team ForAllSecure’s Mayhem Cyber Reasoning System took first place at the August 2016 Cyber Grand Challenge finals, beating out six other computers. The Mayhem CRS is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington as a standalone exhibit titled “Innovations in Defense: Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Cybersecurity” produced by the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. The exhibit will run through Sept. 17, 2017. DoD photo
A stand-alone exhibit titled, “Innovations in Defense: Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Cybersecurity,” features Pittsburgh-based team ForAllSecure’s Mayhem Cyber Reasoning System. The system took first place at the August 2016 Cyber Grand Challenge finals, beating out six other computers. The Mayhem CRS is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The exhibit was produced by the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. The exhibit will run through Sept. 17, 2017. DoD photo
Presenters included Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, chief of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team in the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Operations Directorate-Warfighter Support in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

By the end of the calendar year, the department will field advanced computer algorithms onto government platforms to extract objects from massive amounts of moving or still imagery, Cukor said in his remarks.

“People and computers will work symbiotically to increase the ability of weapon systems to detect objects,” Cukor added. “Eventually we hope that one analyst will be able to do twice as much work, potentially three times as much, as they're doing now. That's our goal.”

A computer algorithm is a set of rules to be followed during problem-solving operations. Cukor described an algorithm as about 75 lines of Python code “placed inside a larger software-hardware container.”

He said the immediate focus is 38 classes of objects that represent the kinds of things the department needs to detect, especially in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Project Maven

The effort to help a workforce increasingly overwhelmed by incoming data, including millions of hours of video, began in April when then-Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work announced in a memo that he was establishing an Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, overseen by the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, to work on something he called Project Maven.

“As numerous studies have made clear, the department of defense must integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning more effectively across operations to maintain advantages over increasingly capable adversaries and competitors,” Work wrote.

Exploitation Analyst Airmen assigned to the 41st Intelligence Squadron have begun using advanced mobile desktop training that uses an environment to challenge each individual analyst in cyberspace maneuvers to achieve mission objectives at Fort. George G. Meade. (U.S. Air Force Illustration/Staff Sgt. Alexandre Montes)
Exploitation Analyst airmen assigned to the 41st Intelligence Squadron have begun using advanced mobile desktop training that uses an environment to challenge each individual analyst in cyberspace maneuvers to achieve mission objectives at Fort. George G. Meade, Md. Air Force Illustration by Staff Sgt. Alexandre Montes
“Although we have taken tentative steps to explore the potential of artificial intelligence, big data and deep learning,” he added, “I remain convinced that we need to do much more and move much faster across DoD to take advantage of recent and future advances in these critical areas.”

Project Maven focuses on computer vision -- an aspect of machine learning and deep learning -- that autonomously extracts objects of interest from moving or still imagery, Cukor said. Biologically inspired neural networks are used in this process, and deep learning is defined as applying such neural networks to learning tasks.

“This effort is an announcement … that we're going to invest for real here,” he said.

Working With Industry

Rapidly delivering artificial intelligence to a combat zone won’t be easy, Cukor said.

“There is no ‘black box’ that delivers the AI system the government needs, at least not now,” he said. “Key elements have to be put together … and the only way to do that is with commercial partners alongside us.”

Work to be accomplished over the next few months includes triaging and labeling data so the algorithms can be trained, the colonel explained.

The Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division at the Combined Air Operations Center at al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, provides a common threat and targeting picture that are key to planning and executing theaterwide aerospace operations to meet the Combined Forces Air Component commander’s objectives. They are also the means by which the effects of air and space operations are measured. Air Force photo
The Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division at the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, provides a common threat and targeting picture that are key to planning and executing theater wide aerospace operations to meet the Combined Forces Air Component commander’s objectives. They are also the means by which the effects of air and space operations are measured. Air Force photo
“That work is inherently governmental and so we have a large group of people -- sophisticated analysts and engineers -- who are going through our data and cleaning it up. We also have a relationship with a significant data-labeling company that will provide services across our three networks -- the unclassified and the classified networks -- to allow our workforce to label our data and prepare it for machine learning,” Cukor said.

The department has a significant effort ongoing to procure computational power, including graphic processing units that allow training of machine-learning algorithms, he said. An algorithmic development contract also is in process -- the department will go through a competitive selection process to find vendors that can provide algorithms against DoD data.

“You don't buy AI like you buy ammunition,” he added. “There's a deliberate workflow process and what the department has given us with its rapid acquisition authorities is an opportunity for about 36 months to explore what is governmental and [how] best to engage industry [to] advantage the taxpayer and the warfighter, who wants the best algorithms that exist to augment and complement the work he does.”

Other aspects of the work include integrating and fielding the algorithms, and once an algorithm is on a platform it must be optimized over its lifecycle, Cukor said.

AI Arms Race

“We are in an AI arms race,” Cukor said. “ … It's happening in industry [and] the big five Internet companies are pursuing this heavily. Many of you will have noted that Eric Schmidt [executive chairman of Alphabet Inc.] is calling Google an AI company now, not a data company.”

The colonel described the technology available commercially, the state-of-the-art in computer vision, as “frankly … stunning,” thanks to work in the area by researchers and engineers at Stanford University, the University of California-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a $36 billion investment last year across commercial industry.

“No area will be left unaffected by the impact of this technology,” he added.

For now, many tasks, like computer vision, are ready for AI capabilities and many are not, Cukor said, noting that “AI will not be selecting a target [in combat] … any time soon. What AI will do is compliment the human operator.”

Before deploying algorithms to combat zones, Cukor said, “you've got to have your data ready and you've got to prepare and you need the computational infrastructure for training.”

Also needed are algorithm developers and software engineers, he said, an interface must be developed between AI and human operators, and ultimately integration and optimization will be needed over the deployment lifecycle.

“All of these things have got to be put in harmony over the next 36 months as we move down this path,” Cukor said.

(Follow Cheryl Pellerin: on Twitter @PellerinDoDNews)

This dude working on Maven even looks like the computer scientist from Terminator 2.

[RJB]

The world keeps getting more insane, and the insane keep getting more powerfull

[Danke]

The world keeps getting more insane, and the insane keep getting more powerfull

You should have no problem then.

[RJB]

You should have no problem then.

You're right. I should run for president. I think holding that office will really benefit me.

[Danke]

You're right. I should run for president. I think holding that office will really benefit me.

Don't forget us, your pretend friends.

[timosman]

Don't forget us, your pretend friends.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...nds-and-Family

[Swordsmyth]

Around a dozen Google employees have quit and close to 4,000 have signed a petition over the company's involvement in a controversial military pilot program known as "Project Maven," which will use artificial intelligence to speed up analysis of drone footage.

Project Maven, a fast-moving Pentagon project also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT), was established in April 2017. Maven’s stated mission is to “accelerate DoD’s integration of big data and machine learning.” In total, the Defense Department spent $7.4 billion on artificial intelligence-related areas in 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The project’s first assignment was to help the Pentagon efficiently process the deluge of video footage collected daily by its aerial drones—an amount of footage so vast that human analysts can’t keep up. -Gizmodo

Project Maven will use machine learning to identify vehicles and other objects from drone footage - with the ultimate goal of enabling the automated detection and identification of objects in up to 38 categories - including the ability to track individuals as they come and go from different locations.

Project Maven’s objective, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. “Jack” Shanahan, director for Defense Intelligence for Warfighter Support in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, “is to turn the enormous volume of data available to DoD into actionable intelligence and insights." -DoD

The internal revolt began shortly after Google revealed its involvement in the project nearly three months ago.

Some Google employees were outraged that the company would offer resources to the military for surveillance technology involved in drone operations, sources said, while others argued that the project raised important ethical questions about the development and use of machine learning. -Gizmodo

The resigned employees cited a range of frustrations, from ethical concerns over the use of AI in a battlefield setting, to larger concerns over Google's overall political decisions.

The disgruntled ex-employees, apparently unaware that Google was seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, have compiled a master document of personal accounts detailing their decisions to leave, which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo.

The employees who are resigning in protest, several of whom discussed their decision to leave with Gizmodo, say that executives have become less transparent with their workforce about controversial business decisions and seem less interested in listening to workers’ objections than they once did. In the case of Maven, Google is helping the Defense Department implement machine learning to classify images gathered by drones. But some employees believe humans, not algorithms, should be responsible for this sensitive and potentially lethal work—and that Google shouldn’t be involved in military work at all.
Historically, Google has promoted an open culture that encourages employees to challenge and debate product decisions. But some employees feel that their leadership no longer as attentive to their concerns, leaving them to face the fallout. “Over the last couple of months, I’ve been less and less impressed with the response and the way people’s concerns are being treated and listened to,” one employee who resigned said. -Gizmodo

Ironically, the development of Google's original algorithm at Stanford was partly funded by a joint CIA-NSA program in which founder Sergei Brin created a method to quickly mine large amounts of data stored in databases.

“Google founder Mr. Sergey Brin was partly funded by this program while he was a PhD student at Stanford. He together with his advisor Prof. Jeffrey Ullman and my colleague at MITRE, Dr. Chris Clifton [Mitre’s chief scientist in IT], developed the Query Flocks System which produced solutions for mining large amounts of data stored in databases. I remember visiting Stanford with Dr. Rick Steinheiser from the Intelligence Community and Mr. Brin would rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out. In fact the last time we met in September 1998, Mr. Brin demonstrated to us his search engine which became Google soon after.” -Nafeez Ahmed

In their defense of Project Maven, Google notes that their AI won't actually be used to kill anyone (just help the military ID targets to "service"). That isn't good enough for workers and academics opposed to the use of machine learning in a military application.

In addition to the petition circulating inside Google, the Tech Workers Coalition launched a petition in April demanding that Google abandon its work on Maven and that other major tech companies, including IBM and Amazon, refuse to work with the U.S. Defense Department. -Gizmodo

“We can no longer ignore our industry’s and our technologies’ harmful biases, large-scale breaches of trust, and lack of ethical safeguards,” the petition reads. “These are life and death stakes.”
Over 90 academics in AI, ethics and computer science released an open letter on Monday, calling on Google to end its involvement with Project Maven and support an international treaty which would prohibit the use of autonomous weapons systems.

Peter Asaro and Lucy Suchman, two of the authors of the letter, have testified before the United Nations about autonomous weapons; a third author, Lilly Irani, is a professor of science and a former Google employee.
Google’s contributions to Project Maven could accelerate the development of fully autonomous weapons, Suchman told Gizmodo. Although Google is based in the U.S., it has an obligation to protect its global user base that outweighs its alignment with any single nation’s military, she said. -Gizmodo

“If ethical action on the part of tech companies requires consideration of who might benefit from a technology and who might be harmed, then we can say with certainty that no topic deserves more sober reflection—no technology has higher stakes—than algorithms meant to target and kill at a distance and without public accountability,” the letter states. “Google has moved into military work without subjecting itself to public debate or deliberation, either domestically or internationally. While Google regularly decides the future of technology without democratic public engagement, its entry into military technologies casts the problems of private control of information infrastructure into high relief.”

We're sure employees have nothing to worry about and their concerns are overblown - as Google's "Don't be evil" motto prevents them from ever participating in some scary program that could kill more innocent people than a Tesla autopilot.


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...oject-pentagon

[timosman]