Pentagon AI more ethical than adversaries’ because of ‘Judeo-Christian society,’ USAF general says::The path to ethical AI is a “very important discussion” being held at DOD’s “very highest levels,” says service’s programs chief.
When an air force general uses a term like Judeo-Christian that is worrying. The brainwashing runs high. There’s no such thing as Judeo-Christian. Judaism and Christianity are vastly different religions albeit related. It’s a propaganda term to create an emotional tie with the US and Israel. No one says Judeo-Islam or Judeo-Mormon because it’s idiotic.
You could talk about abrahamic religions, that encompasses Judaism, Christianism, and Islamism because in theory all three worship the same God, but of course they are never grouped like that because they don’t want to be related with Muslims.
Also the Cristian and Jewish holy books both contain the Old Testament stories.
The Air Force has had an evangelical problem for a long time.
This becomes clear after spending any amount of time in Colorado Springs
Oxygen deprivation.
Can confirm.
My uncle used to fly F-15s for the Air NG, and about 10 or 15 years ago when he had to retire for medical reasons (turns out pulling G’s all the time is bad for your back), he just broke evangelical and is now a fundamentalist pastor.
I came in here to say just this. I’m a Jewish clergyman, so I deal with this kind of shit a lot. The term isn’t just brainwashing; it’s actively seeking to erase Judaism as part of Christianity. It’s shit like this, combined with Christian Nationalism, which makes me jumpy at first when someone identifies as a Christian.
From an armchair political science hot take, it signals something akin to worldwide NATO, inclusive rather than anti-semetic.
Certainly tons of baseless anti semetic crap does exist, i just don’t see this concept that way.
On its face, I’d agree, but the term is used almost exclusively by the hyper-right wing. No one outside of that sphere uses the term (at least as far as I’ve experienced).
My public high school and college courses did.
It has been a very common academic term for many decades.
Maybe it’s regional or a recent change; it’s been a minute since I was in high school, and my university studies were not in the humanities.
Perhaps. It was mid 90s, at the onset of the Politically Correct era.
And i went to an engineering school, but they had us take humanities courses so we would be well rounded and able to communicate good and stuff.
100% agreed. These people only care about Jews in so far as they are useful political props. Ask the members of the Tree of Life synagogue or the passengers of the MS St Louis how much of “Judeo-Christian” society we are.
God I appreciate you and this comment so much. Thank you for acknowledging something us Jews suffer to point out constantly.
Also 100% agreed. If anyone really wants a more inclusive term with positive vibes, i already read ‘‘abrahamic heritage’’ , to include jews, christians and muslims going for the commom ties of the mutually recognized first patriarch. It was a random french scholar though, but maybe we can gain traction. God (the abrahamic god) would be pleased.
This motherfucker drops bombs where he is told. The person you need to worry about is the guy who tells him where to drop the bombs.
you need to worry about is the guy who tells him where to drop the bombs.
Is the answer God? I feel like thats the right answer. Please lord correct me if I am wrong.
As I understand it, of the branches, the Air Force is the worst for neocon evangelicals. What a quote! It gives me shivers.
Yeah the Air force academy in Colorado is in the same city as some very influential evangelical churches, Colorado Springs, and there’s been a lot of scandal about it for a while.
NPR report from around the same time
A more recent scandal where a high ranking air force officer was pushing his ministry on his command
Yeah me too. Have they even read the bible? Quite the horror story. Including the final chapter (spoiler alert: we’re told the apocalypse will have a very high body count).
tl;dr: The headline is false; the general did not actually say that. I thought it sounded wrong, so I watched the video that the article linked to, to check. Sure enough, it was wrong. However, the reality may not be any more reassuring.
Hypothesis: Like, no, that’s obviously wrong; either the headline is trash or the general made a whole tossed salad with mango sauce out of whatever the people working on it said. (stated before further investigation; stay tuned)
Updating: https://youtu.be/wn1yEovtYRM?t=3459
Okay, wow.
So the speaker is saying this at the end of the panel, in response to a question asking about the use of autonomous weapons.
They want to talk about who’s trusted to make the decision of whether to employ lethal force in a combat situation: a human American soldier, who might be exhausted and not thinking clearly, or an algorithm that doesn’t get tired.
And one thing they mention is that an enemy might not have ethics that would lead them them even care about that distinction. And they express that as “Judeo-Christian morality”.
That doesn’t sit right with me. It sounds to me, in that moment, like they’re implying that people from other cultures could be less moral, and that we should be willing to be more free with our weapons towards such people. That sounds to me like the sort of bullshit that came out of the Vietnam War.
But the rest of the answer sounds like they’re trying to point at the problem of making command decisions in scenarios where the opponent might deploy autonomous weapons first. If the enemy has already handed decision-making over to an algorithm, how does that affect what we should do?
And they’re maybe expressing that to their expected audience — mind you, the Air Force is heavily infiltrated by far-right Christian radicals — in a way that they hope makes sense.
Conclusion: The headline is incorrect; the general did not actually say that a Pentagon AI would be more ethical for any reason; he was talking about the human ethical decision of whether to trust AI to make decisions. But what he did say is complicated and scary for different reasons, including the internal culture of the US Air Force.
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Folks can go watch it and see. No need to be a butt about it.
Don’t mind that turd. You took the time to do a thoughtful breakdown. It is a subtle nuance whether “Pentagon AI would be more ethical” or “AI managed by Pentagon staff would be used more ethically” and you were right to point it out. The headline could be accused of oversimplifying or clickbaiting but I don’t think it was intentionally falsifying claims. The real story, as you pointed out, is the sense of righteousness and declaring a moral high ground based on any religion.
I think the general’s point stands, though.
No matter what ethical system you might be using (to decide whether to turn over control of a combat situation to AI), the enemy might be using a different one, and come to different conclusions; and that in turn affects what conclusions you should come to.
This is actually a decision theory issue; and that’s something that military strategists do study.
Thanks for verifying the facts.
That doesn’t sit right with me. It sounds to me, in that moment, like they’re implying that people from other cultures could be less moral, and that we should be willing to be more free with our weapons towards such people.
This is, unfortunately, how many, many very religious people think. And it’s not only insulting for everyone not following their beliefs, but also terrifying in my opinion.
People who believe their god is the only thing that makes them moral aren’t really moral. Because then they never consider why it’s important to, you know, not be an asshole. It’s just compliance.
And the terrifying part is that since their only frame of reference regarding what “good” is would be whatever their religion dictates, it’s always on the verge of breaking completely. You just need to listen to the wrong interpretation at the wrong moment in your life.
Judeo-Christian is such a bullshit made-up term to rope in multiple gullible idiots into the fold.
It’s for people that want to go full “Christians = good, other religions = bad” but know that saying “Jews = bad” won’t go down well.
Not to rope gullible people into the fold, but for attempt to fight anti-semitism, after WWII.
Perhaps in the past that’s how it was used. But not in this situation.
They basically share the Old Testament as part of their holy book. So it is not total bullshit.
It intentionally excludes Islam for purely racist reasons.
Islam has a completely different code of ethics and morals compared to Judaism and Christianity. That much is self evident.
lol I bet you actually believe that
Christians 1000 years ago were basically the same and in many places in Latin America and Africa they still are.
And well, they the nailed Jesus to a tree for being a trouble maker.
Y’all’s the same.
I’m not a christian, and if I remember correctly, all three abrahamic religions have changed over 1000 years. Christianity for the better while Islam has stayed stagnant in its views. Popular christian sects that accept new, western values are available seemingly everywhere while the same cannot be said about Islam.
Other popular Christian sects want to torture women to death instead of letting them get abortions and want to specifically kill me for being trans.
Different assholes, all the same shit.
Idk about it being a racist term in general.
1st of all because Islam is a religion not a race, and we are dealing with Christianity and Judism which are also religions.
And yes, it is a term to group 2 of 3 Abrahamic religions. One that is an offshoot of the other.
Islam is different in that it rejects much of the Old Testament.
So its a term that refers to the group of people that believe the Old Testament.
Its a term. People have used it when making racist policies, but that doesn’t make the word racist.
It’s a term invented and popularized by racist people to make racist policies (yes even Orwell - “Shooting an Elephant” is sus af) . There is already a term that refers to all three Abrahamic religions! By specifically excluding Islam, they are able to exclude the Arab world and all those nonwhite Muslims and make them into an Other. It’s an underpinning ethical framework for shit like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, overthrowing Ghaddafi and the Muslim Brotherhood and plunging North Africa into chaos, and ethnically cleansing Palestine.
It needs to fucking stop.
So people can never refer to judism amd christianity by them selves?
People should be able to talk about them in any combination of one, two, or three that they want. Thats how open intellectual shit happens.
I think your passion has clouded your logic and debate.
So people can never refer to judism amd christianity by them selves?
You are glossing over the question of why they would be choosing to refer to only 2 out 3 related religions.
Do the brain thing yourself before you judge people for it. Some people talk big about debate and intellectuality even though they are the first to disengage and dismiss others’ arguments.
Do the brain thing yourself before you judge people for it.
Yours is the side telling people they cannot use the term or even consider the concept jnown as ‘Judeo-Christian’ without being an irredeamable racist.
I judge people who tell me what things i can and cannot think about and what words i can use.
I call them facists.
People are one thing, but the fucking Pentagon shouldn’t be talking about it! There’s nothing intellectual about this shit.
Yeah, the Pentagon kills just about as many innocent people as God did in that Old Testament this General masturbates to.
As an ex-christian, let me tell you, christians cannot even agree or follow a consistent moral code among themselves, nevermind including whole other religions. Catholics vs evangelicals is a whole thing. This is total bulshit.
our society is a Judeo-Christian society and we have a moral compass.
And here I thought the US was a secular country. Very worrisome that some government employees are using these words.
is there nottheonion on Lemmy yet? because this belongs on there. jfc what a time to be alive
Yes, because the Old Testament is all peace and love and kumbaya.
Another dipshit military lifer inserting subjective religious arrogance - whatever religion it may be - into his spiel, details at eleven.I think if you taught ethics to an AI based on the Bible and gave it the power it would quickly destroy the world. Oh that’s right, they made a bunch of sci-fi movies about that starring an Austrian body builder.
Well I just lost some faith in the United States Air Force. Now I’m worried if we can trust them with General Electric 2.1 megaton hydrogen bombs. The USAF has more than a few.
The US military has a wide range of generals, all the way from people who can barely stop themselves from dribbling while staring at a wall for hours as entertainment, to actual competent ones.
At least this guy is just a moron, some of them are very dangerous. For example US Army General Wesley Clark, who ordered someone to basically start WW3, which didn’t go through because several officers refused to listen to him. Then he ran for president as a democrat, withdres. He later started a consulting firm and now runs a “boutique investment bank”.
The British commander of the Kosovo Force, General Mike Jackson, however, refused to block the Russians through military action saying “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you.”[80][81] Jackson has said he refused to take action because he did not believe it was worth the risk of a military confrontation with the Russians, instead insisting that troops led by Captain James Blunt encircle the airfield.
No way! James Blunt, of all people, appears in this story?! You couldn’t make it up!
Huh, I didn’t click the Wikipedia link until I read your comment because I assumed it was a name coincidence. Man, that guy has had one hell of a life.
You had faith in the USAF?
For <checks> approaching eighty years, they’ve been pretty good at not dropping any nuclear weapons, even those bombs had a very simple launch code to arm. The rise of Christian Nationalism in the US armed forces has been a concern since the new century and the 9/11 attacks (and subsequent PATRIOT act). I’m not sure Judeo-Christian values and Artificial Intelligence is a benign mix.
Where could they be?
Israel got their shit from somewhere and have not done live testing as far as we know. So I’m willing to bet these “disappearances” are a lot like supply “disappearances” that conveniently end up in the hands of various far right militias they support. Or the “accounting errors” that conveniently result in people they support getting shit loads of funding without any need for congressional decisions.
The ones at the bottom of the ocean are almost certainly still there, or were eventually retrieved by military diving teams but without mention to the press because why would they?
It depends on the size of the search area, which is often comparable to large states in the US. Locating famous wrecks like Titanic and Bismark can be a major undertaking.
And then if it’s deep like Titanic retrieval may be too expensive, too risky or both.
Yeah let’s make sure AI is ethical by some religious standard before we put it in charge of the nuclear arsenal. What an ass.
Now this is a Terminator reboot I’d watch
starring Kevin Sorbo
“Judeo-Christian society” has been airstriking the Middle East for years and provoking wars for a lot longer than that which is a violation of Christian beliefs (“Do to others what you would have them do to you”, among others) so they can kindly shove it up their warmongering ass
Welp time to strip him of his rank, he’s an idiot.
“You see, first thing we did was teach it about the Bible and its teachings. Of course none of that Roman Catholic shit.”
No True Christian would ever activate a fully automated sentry killbot that doesn’t use at least one of its compute cores to pray to the Almighty on a loop.
We taught it the Bible*
*King James Version
Kinda sounds like they mean it follows their personal ethics and religious rules more closely than others, not that it’s actually more ethical.
Ethics are entirely subjective.
I would argue that any system that follows the rules of a religious society is deeply unethical.
lmao
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If we exclude the overall negative impact Christianity has had to humanity over hundreds of years… maybe vegans?
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