draft
On further reflection, I am taking back my criticism about the whole Google/US Military kerflop (if thats a word). I thought it was odd for employees of Google to refuse to do an AI military project given the role of the US Military (aka DARPA) in inventing and supporting AI and in particular computer science at Stanford. But now I think they have a very reasonable point to make, or might be making, since after all, I dont really know what people at Google think, since what I know comes from the news media and has not gone into much depth.
Several people who know at least as much as I do about the history of AI and post war computer science dispute my assertion(s) about the role of the military elite in the creation of those fields, and the fact is that all I have are my impressions, not the result of serious research into the details of what I think I know on the subject. So often in the past my impressions have been entertaining but by no means the whole story.
But even if I have a minor point to make about the history of science and technology, other considerations far outweigh this.
These considerations include (a) Our military has been voluntary since Vietnam, so it should certainly be the case that wherever original funding may have come from, people should be able to choose whether or not they work on a military project. (b) When they chose Google there was absolutely no reason to think that they would be involved in such a project (directly at least, indirectly is another kettle of fish), (c) Google is an international company and their reputation and success may depend on not being perceived as being directly involved with the military, any military, given the bad reputation such militaries have, (d) Other companies that work for the federal government directly (e.g. by taking contracts with the IRS or the DOD) generally set up a separate company or division to deal with such things. Thus their employees can make the conscious choice to work with such a company or division or not. I am sure that not all such choices may be entirely voluntary (e.g. we have a project for you over here, you can take the project or be unemployed) but even so, it gives people fair warning about what is up. And last, but not least, (e) As much as I respect our military, it is the tool of our political elite, and our elite has been involved in questionable military adventure after adventure in my lifetime. However much I may respect various aspects of our military, which is iteslef a long discussion, there can be no argument that they are often put to the most appalling use and it is completely reasonable to try and live ones' life without out being involved in such things, at least as much as is possible given that we must all swim in the same ocean.
Finally, and last but not least, to the best of my knowlege, Google has been very open about their work and research, and there is nothing preventing another company from doing this sort of work. In fact, since working with the US Government is such a complicated thing to do, it is likely that this other company (whether new or existing) might do more of what the DOD really needs.
In other words, even if I maintain (provisionally) my point about the history of technology, there are plenty of other reasons for Google to abstain from this work if their employees so request.
This post is just a work in progress and its very clear to me I dont know the whole story.
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