Google nukes military AI, Amazon happy touting Rekognition to police, and much more

Here's a quick roundup of all the important announcements in AI this week. Google has succumbed to pressure and won't be renewing its contract with the US Department of Defense for Project Maven, there's a public massive data dump for useful for training self-driving cars and some hatred for AI stock photos. Google to pull …

[Oneman2Many]

Wonder if 1100 hours the driving dataset contains has been human verified.

[Wolfclaw]

Given enough encouragement and cash from DOD, I'm sure Google will sign backup under a black project and ensure no mention of it's involvmeent or AI ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the problem seems to have been the discomfort and concern felt by the staff doing the job, how would you propose to conceal from them that they're doing AI for the military?

After all, they'd know they were doing an AI project, and they'd be able to recognise the source of video / photos they were working on as being from some sort of overhead platform.

Kinda hard to conceal the purpose from the people working on it...

[Oneman2Many]

And the workers will almost certainly be under NDA so won't be able to publicly complain.

[David 164]

But they can resign and leave the company knowing Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and others will snapped them the second they leave. I bet most of the real talent at google have inboxes overflowing with job offers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hotel New Hampshire

"You can check out any time but you can never leave."

Rather like the Mafia.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alphabet will just set up another company to use all of Google's IP for black projects, but employ staff who have no moral qualms about it.

The beautiful thing about this arrangement is that the company can run as a non-profit since all the money will go to pay Google licensing fees.

[David 164]

Wasn't the whole project based on Tensorflow anyway. Which is a open source project, so the military can just carry on like nothing happen, Google engineers just won't be answering the phone when they ring asking questions.

[Starace]

Which is more or less the situation anyway.

And the Googlers will still answer the phone perfectly happily because no one is actually going to tell them what the tech is being used for.

[Sam Therapy]

"it’s god awful stock photos."

It's "its", not "it's". Fucking hell. Professional writers should not make this mistake. Ever.

[Beau]

Professional writers should not make this mistake?

"it’s god awful stock photos."

"its" Possessive correct.

"it's" Contraction of "it is".

Or Contraction of "it has" (Informal.)

What's the problem?

[Mr Han]

Re: Professional writers should not make this mistake?

Or Contraction of "it has" (Informal.)

What's the problem?

What do you mean 'what has the problem?'. It has English grammar rules of course. It's is so confusing. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Professional writers should not make this mistake?

You wouldn't write hi's so don't write it's or her's either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pennywise knows the correct usage of "it"

[Claptrap314]

Marketing

Just tell the Google engineers that it's being used to identify Klansmen, and they'll be all in favor.

[sugarpops]

Sugiwoogie

Seems they copied somewhat this guys idea:

https://dalybulge.blogspot.com/2018/04/cyberpunk-sabpk.html?view=magazine