Comment on Palantir Started By Spying on a City Now Sells AI for War

Fingolfinz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Frankly a lot of engineers are soulless and their only north star is profit and lawsuits.

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  • AnalogNotDigital@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah seriously most engineers I’ve ever met have a chronic case of sociopathy.

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    • kevin2107@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Hey man i just can’t make eye contact

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• Bo7a@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Devil’s Advocate (damn near literally this time around)

  Try being a young engineer at the top of your game and saying no to an offer where the yearly salary makes google engineers jealous. Not everyone can say no.

  Palantir offers like 400k/year to run-of-the-mill forward deployed engineers for foundry (Civilian platform) where the job is 99% actually helping customers with interesting engineering problems.

  I can’t even imagine what they are offering folks working on gotham(govt military) side.

  I guess what I’m trying to say is that while a ton of those engineers are soulless sociopaths, some of them just took a job that pays super well and don’t align with the goals of the C-levels. And in fact - a ton won’t even know what those goals are.

  Remember - Our enemy is the c-suite, not the level 1 support agent. Even at evilcorp. Thankfully I am in a position where my kids are grown up and the money treadmill isn’t set on hardmode for me anymore. I can say no. But even for me it is sometimes difficult.

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  • Fingolfinz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah well I don’t really give a fuck. I never became a class traitor for money and don’t forgive anyone who has

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    • Bo7a@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I haven’t either. But I can see how a young person without a lot of knowledge of the world and the impending weight of 50 years of work ahead of them, possibly with a family to feed, or an extended family to take care of due to the inherently predatory healthcare system where they were born, might make that choice. And I understand it, regardless of “forgiveness”.

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      • Fingolfinz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        We are failing the youth and need to completely change our society. I get what you’re saying and see why it happens but it’s the result of our fucked up society and capitalism. People coming out of school shouldn’t have to face these ethical dilemmas because of the system they’re subjected to and if everyone doesn’t get on board then we’re just fucked and all generations after will be more fucked

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  • a4ng3l@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How do you go from « saying no to cash » to « c-levels are the issue » in the context of ethical considerations for engineers that enable AI in military industrial complex?

    That guy definitely decides that lives he will impacts are less relevant than his salary. That’s ethics & morality… and a seasoned AI engineer can certainly eat well enough on in any other industry.

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    • Bo7a@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I am not sure I get what this word soup is saying. No offense intended buy maybe try re-wording this if you want to discuss.

      PS: foundry is not an AI platform, the engineers I am talking about are usually 20-ish year old java and python devs, and it is easier to understand how someone in that group might not even know how evil evilcorp is.

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      • a4ng3l@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Try to read it slowly maybe?

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