Pentagon AI more ethical than adversaries’ because of ‘Judeo-Christian society,’ USAF general says::The path to ethical AI is a “very important discussion” being held at DOD’s “very highest levels,” says service’s programs chief.

  • LostMyRedditLogin@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    When an air force general uses a term like Judeo-Christian that is worrying. The brainwashing runs high. There’s no such thing as Judeo-Christian. Judaism and Christianity are vastly different religions albeit related. It’s a propaganda term to create an emotional tie with the US and Israel. No one says Judeo-Islam or Judeo-Mormon because it’s idiotic.

  • fubo@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    tl;dr: The headline is false; the general did not actually say that. I thought it sounded wrong, so I watched the video that the article linked to, to check. Sure enough, it was wrong. However, the reality may not be any more reassuring.


    Hypothesis: Like, no, that’s obviously wrong; either the headline is trash or the general made a whole tossed salad with mango sauce out of whatever the people working on it said. (stated before further investigation; stay tuned)


    Updating: https://youtu.be/wn1yEovtYRM?t=3459


    Okay, wow.

    So the speaker is saying this at the end of the panel, in response to a question asking about the use of autonomous weapons.

    They want to talk about who’s trusted to make the decision of whether to employ lethal force in a combat situation: a human American soldier, who might be exhausted and not thinking clearly, or an algorithm that doesn’t get tired.

    And one thing they mention is that an enemy might not have ethics that would lead them them even care about that distinction. And they express that as “Judeo-Christian morality”.

    That doesn’t sit right with me. It sounds to me, in that moment, like they’re implying that people from other cultures could be less moral, and that we should be willing to be more free with our weapons towards such people. That sounds to me like the sort of bullshit that came out of the Vietnam War.

    But the rest of the answer sounds like they’re trying to point at the problem of making command decisions in scenarios where the opponent might deploy autonomous weapons first. If the enemy has already handed decision-making over to an algorithm, how does that affect what we should do?

    And they’re maybe expressing that to their expected audience — mind you, the Air Force is heavily infiltrated by far-right Christian radicals — in a way that they hope makes sense.


    Conclusion: The headline is incorrect; the general did not actually say that a Pentagon AI would be more ethical for any reason; he was talking about the human ethical decision of whether to trust AI to make decisions. But what he did say is complicated and scary for different reasons, including the internal culture of the US Air Force.

  • jmhdBV8l@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    As I understand it, of the branches, the Air Force is the worst for neocon evangelicals. What a quote! It gives me shivers.

  • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Judeo-Christian is such a bullshit made-up term to rope in multiple gullible idiots into the fold.

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It’s for people that want to go full “Christians = good, other religions = bad” but know that saying “Jews = bad” won’t go down well.

      • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        As an ex-christian, let me tell you, christians cannot even agree or follow a consistent moral code among themselves, nevermind including whole other religions. Catholics vs evangelicals is a whole thing. This is total bulshit.

  • febra@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    our society is a Judeo-Christian society and we have a moral compass.

    And here I thought the US was a secular country. Very worrisome that some government employees are using these words.

  • spicysoup@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    is there nottheonion on Lemmy yet? because this belongs on there. jfc what a time to be alive

  • Mdotaut801@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Is there anything more annoying than Christianity and christians? Self righteous beyond belief.

    • III@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      If we exclude the overall negative impact Christianity has had to humanity over hundreds of years… maybe vegans?

      • Mdotaut801@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Being a vegan doesn’t have a negative impact to humanity at all unless vegans specifically annoy you. They don’t annoy me. What they say and do makes sense to me, I just like to eat meat too much.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 years ago

    Well I just lost some faith in the United States Air Force. Now I’m worried if we can trust them with General Electric 2.1 megaton hydrogen bombs. The USAF has more than a few.

    • Raltoid@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      The US military has a wide range of generals, all the way from people who can barely stop themselves from dribbling while staring at a wall for hours as entertainment, to actual competent ones.

      At least this guy is just a moron, some of them are very dangerous. For example US Army General Wesley Clark, who ordered someone to basically start WW3, which didn’t go through because several officers refused to listen to him. Then he ran for president as a democrat, withdres. He later started a consulting firm and now runs a “boutique investment bank”.

      • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Where could they be?

        Israel got their shit from somewhere and have not done live testing as far as we know. So I’m willing to bet these “disappearances” are a lot like supply “disappearances” that conveniently end up in the hands of various far right militias they support. Or the “accounting errors” that conveniently result in people they support getting shit loads of funding without any need for congressional decisions.

        The ones at the bottom of the ocean are almost certainly still there, or were eventually retrieved by military diving teams but without mention to the press because why would they?

        • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 years ago

          It depends on the size of the search area, which is often comparable to large states in the US. Locating famous wrecks like Titanic and Bismark can be a major undertaking.

          And then if it’s deep like Titanic retrieval may be too expensive, too risky or both.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Yes, because the Old Testament is all peace and love and kumbaya.
    Another dipshit military lifer inserting subjective religious arrogance - whatever religion it may be - into his spiel, details at eleven.

  • PabloPicasshole@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    “You see, first thing we did was teach it about the Bible and its teachings. Of course none of that Roman Catholic shit.”

    • itsnotlupus@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      No True Christian would ever activate a fully automated sentry killbot that doesn’t use at least one of its compute cores to pray to the Almighty on a loop.

  • Obinice@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Kinda sounds like they mean it follows their personal ethics and religious rules more closely than others, not that it’s actually more ethical.

    Ethics are entirely subjective.

    I would argue that any system that follows the rules of a religious society is deeply unethical.

  • finkrat@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    “Judeo-Christian society” has been airstriking the Middle East for years and provoking wars for a lot longer than that which is a violation of Christian beliefs (“Do to others what you would have them do to you”, among others) so they can kindly shove it up their warmongering ass