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A comment on Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project. Parent comment

Re:Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. P... by flamedoge on Thursday April 05, 2018 @06:05AM (#16763388)
Engineers, like most human beings, are free to waste their talent. It wouldn't be nice to demand some kind of moral responsibility from engineers just because they can do more. How they live would be up to them, and free market solution would be far better terms under which they would be convinced to do more.
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Re:Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. P... by unclebucknasty on Thursday April 05, 2018 @07:08AM (#16763674)
Yes, we're all free to choose, which might include doing things that are overtly immoral (as in the parent discussion).

My question was whether it's just as immoral a choice to not use one's potential to help people as it is to use one's talent to overtly harm people.

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Re:Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. P... by wu-ikkyu on Thursday April 05, 2018 @11:50AM (#16765987)
>My question was whether it's just as immoral a choice to not use one's potential to help people as it is to use one's talent to overtly harm people.

Is the answer to that not obvious? It's the difference between negligence and pre-meditation/mens rea.

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Re:Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. P... by unclebucknasty on Thursday April 05, 2018 @01:37PM (#16767037)
The suggestion that it might be obvious is central to the question and what makes it interesting (to me).

Because, yes, it would seem obvious.

>It's the difference between negligence and pre-meditation/mens rea.

a) you're using legal definitions when the question is about morality and b) it's not negligence to actively choose one path over another. It's simply making a decision, and I was asking if that decision can be considered a moral one.

Started off as a philosophical question, but seems to have gone a bit literal. Oh well, it happens.

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Re:Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. P... by wu-ikkyu on Friday April 06, 2018 @02:37PM (#16776029)
>a) you're using legal definitions when the question is about morality

You don't think the legal differences between those two things were based on perceived immorality?

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