Should AI researchers kill people?

AI research is increasingly being used by militaries around the world for offensive and defensive applications. This past week, groups of AI researchers began to fight back against two separate programs located halfway around the world from each other, generating tough questions about just how much engineers can affect the future uses of these technologies. From Silicon Valley, the New York Times published an internal protest memo written by several thousand Google employees, which vociferously opposed Google's work on a Defense Department-led initiative called Project Maven, which aims to use computer vision algorithms to analyze vast troves of image and video data. As the department's news service quoted Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor last year about the initiative: "You don't buy AI like you buy ammunition," he added. "There's a deliberate workflow process and what the department has given us with its rapid acquisition authorities is an opportunity for about 36 months to explore what is governmental and [how] best to engage industry [to] advantage the taxpayer and the warfighter, who wants the best algorithms that exist to augment and complement the work he does."