The unwritten implication is that this applies to AI, as well. I find it hard to disagree. I don't know what to do about it.
The HN crowd is elated that we can finally finish our side projects, while the ruling class is already using AI to subvert democracy, spread misinformation, and develop weapons. "If we don't build these weapons, someone else will." If we can learn nothing else from history, we should learn that you can't turn back the clock.
But also, inevitability is not an argument for complicity. If you personally decide to work on bioweapons, I don't think you can shrug and say "eh, it was going to happen either way". As tech workers, we've really mastered the art of coming up with justifications for what essentially just boils down to "all my friends have gotten rich and now it's my turn".
I've met hundreds of sharp engineers from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. None of them could look me straight in the eye and say "yeah, you know, what we're doing with ad tech is actually good". They just always had an explanation along the lines of "it's not that bad, and besides, if we don't do it, someone else will, and we're the good guys here".
Like we have prehistoric skeletons with obvious signs of traumatic injury inflicted by tools.
No one is arguing that modern technology is the sole or even principal cause of military deaths. The argument is simply that technology has greatly facilitated the ease and scale.
Imagine a world without nuclear weapons, automatic weapons, rockets, and explosives (other than gunpowder). There would still be wars, certainly, but they would be a lot less destructive.
The death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated at about 200,000.
Nuclear weapons have killed far fewer people then any other type in history, whereas the musket did some work.
And you know, a bunch of Romans with the pinnacle of technology - the sharp thing on a long stick - in the Battle of Carthage collectively had about 100,000 casualties and also demolished a city. And that was one of many battles in many wars.
The masses of man and ground into the masses of man in conflict, at scale, at every turn that we've had organized society. We live in a time where casualty scales are actually shockingly low in conflict.
Nice of you to omit the 50 million other civilian casualties in WW2, plus around 20 million military casualties a 5 million prisoners. Nothing in the classical world comes close to that left of destruction.
Battle of Carthage was also 3 years and was a siege of a city, so you know… not a lot of places for the people inside to escape. Also took about 20-50k expertly trained Roman soldiers vs a few trained guys in a plane pressing a button.
The army was going to be reduced by a factor of 100, and two tiny armies were going to face off while the majority of men of fighting age were going to sit at home and paint landscape paintings? Really?
morninglight•2h ago
How about some modern, safe bio-weapons.
rationalist•1h ago
That means they're made from renewable resources, right?