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Re:We work for Google. Our employer shouldn't be in the busi... by sarabande on Thursday April 05, 2018 @08:21AM (#16764105)
I don't think that's an appropriate analogy. If steel is the commodity in this example, then general AI techniques would be the analog for Google. Here, employees are complaining about a specific project working with the DoD, not generally working on AI:

"Google is implementing Project Maven, a customized AI surveillance engine that uses “wide area motion imagery” data captured by US government drones to detect vehicles and other objects, track their motions and provide results to the Department of Defense."

Re:We work for Google. Our employer shouldn't be in the busi... by sureaboutthis on Thursday April 05, 2018 @08:38AM (#16764264)
The steel industry actively supplies the military with steel products for making ships and other things used in war.
Re:We work for Google. Our employer shouldn't be in the busi... by dogma1138 on Thursday April 05, 2018 @09:21PM (#16770225)
While that’s true an individual company might still elect not to do so.

However I think that the biggest difference is that Google employees have the luxury of saying that because from both a corporate and personal prespective they take zero risk.

Worst case Google let’s them go with a nice severance to avoid lawsuits and they’ll find another job by the end of the week.

Workers in a steel mill that might be lucky to even have a job don’t.