this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
40 points (93.5% liked)

Technology

58061 readers
31 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year 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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah let's make sure AI is ethical by some religious standard before we put it in charge of the nuclear arsenal. What an ass.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now this is a Terminator reboot I'd watch

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

starring Kevin Sorbo

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I came in here to say just this. I'm a Jewish clergyman, so I deal with this kind of shit a lot. The term isn't just brainwashing; it's actively seeking to erase Judaism as part of Christianity. It's shit like this, combined with Christian Nationalism, which makes me jumpy at first when someone identifies as a Christian.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From an armchair political science hot take, it signals something akin to worldwide NATO, inclusive rather than anti-semetic.

Certainly tons of baseless anti semetic crap does exist, i just don't see this concept that way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On its face, I'd agree, but the term is used almost exclusively by the hyper-right wing. No one outside of that sphere uses the term (at least as far as I've experienced).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My public high school and college courses did.

It has been a very common academic term for many decades.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe it's regional or a recent change; it's been a minute since I was in high school, and my university studies were not in the humanities.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Perhaps. It was mid 90s, at the onset of the Politically Correct era.

And i went to an engineering school, but they had us take humanities courses so we would be well rounded and able to communicate good and stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The Air Force has had an evangelical problem for a long time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

100% agreed. These people only care about Jews in so far as they are useful political props. Ask the members of the Tree of Life synagogue or the passengers of the MS St Louis how much of "Judeo-Christian" society we are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You could talk about abrahamic religions, that encompasses Judaism, Christianism, and Islamism because in theory all three worship the same God, but of course they are never grouped like that because they don't want to be related with Muslims.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Also the Cristian and Jewish holy books both contain the Old Testament stories.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also 100% agreed. If anyone really wants a more inclusive term with positive vibes, i already read ''abrahamic heritage'' , to include jews, christians and muslims going for the commom ties of the mutually recognized first patriarch. It was a random french scholar though, but maybe we can gain traction. God (the abrahamic god) would be pleased.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Since most of the targets are Muslim, I guess it makes sense? /s

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Welp time to strip him of his rank, he's an idiot.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I think if you taught ethics to an AI based on the Bible and gave it the power it would quickly destroy the world. Oh that's right, they made a bunch of sci-fi movies about that starring an Austrian body builder.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

if it's Christian ethics that guide us, we're all fucked

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (18 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not to rope gullible people into the fold, but for attempt to fight anti-semitism, after WWII.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Perhaps in the past that's how it was used. But not in this situation.

load more comments (16 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah the Air force academy in Colorado is in the same city as some very influential evangelical churches, Colorado Springs, and there's been a lot of scandal about it for a while.

Report from FFRF

NPR report from around the same time

A more recent scandal where a high ranking air force officer was pushing his ministry on his command

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

...That doesn't instill me with a lot of confidence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

We taught it the Bible*

*King James Version

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Can you please leave us out of this?

Sincerely, The Jews

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Is this satire? If not, good lord.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

this is one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever heard.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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".

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You had faith in the USAF?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

For approaching eighty years, they've been pretty good at not dropping any nuclear weapons, even those bombs had a very simple launch code to arm. The rise of Christian Nationalism in the US armed forces has been a concern since the new century and the 9/11 attacks (and subsequent PATRIOT act). I'm not sure Judeo-Christian values and Artificial Intelligence is a benign mix.

load more comments
view more: next ›