Nothing but respect to TurnTrout for taking an action like this. The world needs more smart people who are willing to stand for what they feel is right, despite the pressures otherwise. Without that occurring more, our species is going to lose many impactful prisoner's dilemmas coming these next two decades.

This raises my respect for AI researchers a little bit too. I have often felt that the entire industry is pretty tainted to the core, and for better or worse that colors my opinion of the researchers.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I thought it was gross to download pirated art for a student project when I was at Berkeley years ago. So it has been really sad to witness many of the most brilliant minds of this generation answering the siren song of disrespecting the collective effort of others to extract and resell residual value.

I'd guess TurnTrout doesn't agree on that framing, otherwise he probably would not have been at Deep Mind. But clearly he and I agree on other ethical positions; I am nothing but glad to see him stick to his principles here.

Hmm, links for what? My student project? The decisions that face humanity that are pretty clearly modellable as prisoner's dilemmas?

Otherwise not sure what I could cite--I would assume most all on this forum know that AI is trained on the works of other people, without their permission to do so. I guess you could disagree with my framing, but I wouldn't think this requires a citation.

I think maybe my writing wasn't clear, and it sounded like I was referrencing some well known thing that happened at UC Berkeley. I have edited it to read more cleanly!

Yes; the student project you were talking about.

It wasn't clear to me it was _your_ project nor who pirated it. I was under the impression it was a well known scandal from your original, unedited comment.

Apologies if my comment sounded hostile; I was just asking for a clarification/more information on it.

No worries! Thanks for engaging. Fun to have the rare kindly-resolved internet discussion.

Props to the author. I left Microsoft due to their work with Israel to spy on Palestinians and record all of their phone conversations (in addition to other IDF collaborations). They ended up walking some of it back, but Satya was complicit.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/microsoft-bloc...

Respect for sticking to your beliefs. Just out of curiosity though why do people not want smart AI weapons? I would much rather have an onboard AI that can discriminate between unarmed civilians and military assets, seems irresponsible to not... Is a dumb sea mine that blows up everything somehow better than a smart sea mine that knows to not blow up sometimes?

"You're absolutely right, that wasn't a military target—it was actually a girl's school. It won't happen again!"

I realize that's not a great argument and was definitely tongue-in-cheek, but given there's still a lot of debate about the accuracy of AI for far more mundane tasks, my personal perspective is that until we have LLMs and such that are truly, demonstrably far more accurate than humans, with true reasoning and judgement capabilities, they don't belong where lives are at stake.

I wouldn't want an LLM-underpinned machine running anesthesia during a surgery; why would I an LLM-underpinned military apparatus that is deciding the lives of far more? I wouldn't, not in their current state.

In a hypothetical future where we truly trust incredibly smart AIs or LLMs or whatever "smart" technology it is for driving weaponry, okay - if it's truly necessary; I abhor war and the death and destruction wrought by it.

In my mind, though - even if we get to that future where there's some vastly superior technology to the LLMs we have today, which can judge and reason, then I'll have a bunch of other questions, like understanding the motivations of said technology, because I suspect it'll be something much closer to AGI, and that opens a whole separate can of philosophical worms.

Principled people have become so rare

Only when the bank account reaches 7 - 8 figures.

Even at zero dollars and a billion dollars they feel rare. Honestly I am surprised how many tech people still work for Facebooks and Googles of the world when they actively have used their platforms against most of their values. These are skilled people that can still make a living elsewhere.

No need to downplay it. There are many for whom it's never enough.

And there are others who left years ago and warned us. Back-patting isn't all or nothing, and I think it's reasonable to praise those who left when they saw the writing on the wall more than those who leave only once they see their company materially supporting state killings.

Fair.

> Plus, a pledge is only worth the credibility behind it. When someone signs “I will not support the development of lethal autonomous weapons,” then stays while their company sells unrestricted AI to a military that wants exactly that, they teach every counterparty a lesson: these safety people will not act, even at their own brightest line. The next commitment they make is worth less. Eventually it’s worth nothing.

This is why I haven’t taken the internally employed (and visibly public) AI safety people seriously for years: they always back down, because they value that fat paycheck and fiscal rewards and associated status over their proclaimed ethical values, red lines, and boundaries. Their actions betray their every word.

That’s also why I push that we remember these names, the ones who fought back as well as those who lied through their teeth. We should remember everyone willing to harm others to protect themselves, and hold them accountable for their misdeeds. In an ideal world, people like Jeff and Sundar and Stuart would be blackballed so hard they’d never be able to get so much as a help desk job ever again, nevermind any position of leadership. It’s why I proclaim them to be monsters, giddily sacrificing the anonymous other for personal vainglory and the avoidance of standing on any sort of principle.

The OP did everything right and demonstrably proved the entire apparatus is rotten to its very core, to the point of infesting and poisoning the very entities professing to stop its worst excesses (IASEAI). Why we give these ghouls the slightest bit of credibility anymore is beyond me.

It is honorable but ultimately hasn’t democracy spoken wrt the issues mentioned in the post?

For better or worse millions of Americans voted for the guy doing the deportations.

I also find it difficult to reconcile not using AI for weapons. If war is inevitable AI presumably would at least ensure you are on target.

AI helps people scale. If being "on target" means that you find people when they're eating dinner so you can kill their entire family, then using AI to scale that up is a terrible thing. That's exactly what Israel did with Lavender. They literally had a kill list called "Where's daddy?".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245

As opposed to what though? Again, I assert violence is inevitable.

AI is the end of the funnel and I actually think the mass surveillance at the beginning of the funnel is a bigger issue. The concentration of power is the problem. If you or I could defend ourselves against state level actors with AI weapons, then they would be a good thing (imho). AI and mass surveillance at the state level create a power imbalance that is a major threat to human rights and should be resisted as much as possible.

Agreed, I feel like the people who say no to AI weapons haven't actually presented a real argument (that I have heard) besides terminator bad

Regardless of whether AI is involved, many people simply don't want to work on weapons systems, or on non-weapons technologies that are intended to become part of a weapons system.

Thats fine, but a serious luxury belief IMO

>AI presumably would at least ensure you are on target.

That is a big presumption.

This is inspiring, thank you to the author, it must have a hard piece to write.

We know now that Google is a sycophantic company whose DEI initiatives were all fake and dropped once Trump got elected.

This somewhat naive initiative was bound to fail. The good news is that the AI military products won't work, except perhaps for blowing up a girls' school.

Here are CEOs falling over themselves to support Hassabis' regulatory capture proposal:

https://xcancel.com/sundarpichai/status/2077086951833063580#...

https://xcancel.com/satyanadella/status/2077063479232795024#...

https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2077415601610297535#m

It is an exclusive club and we are not part of it.

Saying AI military products wont work is the dumbest thing i've heard in awhile

Search for Anduril drone failures in Ukraine and several Lattice software failures. And perhaps capitalize "I".

How is Maven working in Iran?

Thats like saying cars wont work because they get flat tires

I did not know about TurnTrout till now and thanks to HN community now I know. I am beyond impressed as to how he lives by his principles. I don't think I have this kind of courgae or confidence and thankfully I don't work for Google or have to quit it. On the other hand we have smart people who have choose to work for companies like Palantir and are proud of it.

I think a man who makes that kind of choice is seriously admirable. I could never have made that choice myself.

If the author were to read these comments, I'd commiserate with them on the disappointment of the utopia left behind in the service of acquiring wealth and power. An abundant solarpunk future enabled and augmented by AI, hyped so well by early Google and Kurzweil, captured as capital to earn a buck for shareholders.

Mad props for pushing as far as they could push.

> Even if Google had adopted your Framework, the Pentagon would have refused

> I agree. xAI would still have given over their AI. But if Google had given signs of independence earlier, it could perhaps have built a coalition with OpenAI and Anthropic.

This is like saying that Google and Apple might build a coalition to prevent App Store regulation. These are competitors, they all see moral flexibility as an advantage. They're not going to take a moralist stance if their federal protection is predicated on federal cooperation. All of these FAANG businesses have already bent the knee in anticipation of this, xAI is just riding the coattails of the federal quid-pro-quo.

When you go to work at a megacorp, you're always leaving your ethics at the door. Yes, there's an attractive pie-in-the-sky fantasy that Apple does care about human rights, or that Google isn't evil, but they're always just lies. I disagree with a lot of GCP's customers, but I'm still shocked that a DeepMind employee would make it this far in the career pipeline before seeing the soylent green get made.

Competitors often wish they didn't have to compete.

For example, a cartel is "a group of independent market participants who collaborate with each other and avoid competition in order to improve profits and dominate the market"

It's something that could happen in this world, through the collective action of employees, that corporate strategy can be changed.

I hope he becomes the seed crystal around which crystallization of peaceful use of AI happens.

> through the collective action of employees, that corporate strategy can be changed.

I just don't agree with this. I'd like to, but the corporate strategy is not being set by rank-and-file engineers. Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk - these are the executives that are steering the ship. You can change the culture internally and cause a lot of strife, but typically you don't have control over the strategy. If the executive says you're giving API access to the NSA, then that's what is going to happen.

apple and google are regularly on the same side against eu regulations

> I'm sure I'll get flamed into oblivion for this but it's weird to me how the zeitgeist is anti-colonialism but also against enforcing borders and national sovereignty

Let me try a reply that is perhaps a little more constructive than where this discussion went.

I think most folks would frame home rule and freedom of movement in the context of basic individual rights, not national rights. I suggest you might fare better explaining some context about why you believe they should care about nation states to begin with

Fair comment and thank you.

"Freedom of movement" is a fairly loaded term, but even as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is: - "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." - "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."

Freedom of movement isn't the right to go live anywhere you want across any national jurisdiction. Every nation on the planet has very explicit rules around this. Even the unrecognized ones.

I mean this sincerely, may you never find employment again. I hope you wash out of the industry due to whatever festering mental issues finally take hold and render you unable to carry out evil for a better paycheck. Goddamn you and your ilk.

Same to you I guess? The world is not a black and white place. Rigorous self-defense is not evil.

I chose to be vulnerable and honest knowing what kind of responses I would get and the guidelines of this board call for assuming good faith. It's discourse like yours that is inflaming and ruining our society.

I didn't even endorse any specific actions here, I'm just not meeting your moral threshold based on your interpretation of some pretty thinly-detailed comments that I made.

You also can't influence the game if you're not a player so opting out of working in the entire defense industry is probably against your interests.

make no mistake, it’s mindsets like yours that put us on the path we currently tread.

> I'd go work for the Voldemort companies in a heartbeat […]

being honest and vulnerable about being a shitty person does not beget or earn you any kind of mutual respect. we are simply not the same.

> some comment you edited out where you said I'm heartless and spineless.

And I know what it's like to live in a place without adequate law enforcement and/or military.

Personal insults and calling me mentally ill. Are you projecting?

Apparently willingness to work at Palantir or Anduril or other defense contractors makes me irredeemably evil. I'm sure you're real fun at parties.

Tbh, I'm glad though. I'm really great at what I do and have had a long and successful career. We need more hiring filters and I don't want coworkers with deeply skewed perspectives, inadequate objectivity and who cannot coexist with those of different world-views. Self-filtering is the cheapest and best kind.

> Apparently willingness to work at Palantir or Anduril or other defense contractors makes me irredeemably evil.

hey, look! it’s learning!

am I the only one that finds it very hard to read this font?

If you do not like what Google is doing, just leave as I said before [0]. They don't care about you.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47931336

I mean - the idea that any company employing non-trivial amounts of people "cares" in any sane sense of the word "care" is absurd.

Who is supposed to "care" about you? A single person, definitely not the CEO, is going to individually care about 20k+ workers, especially not 200k+ workers.

Even if you assumed an altruistic HR department, it's still going to be a faceless blob when you're a 100k+ company.

> Jeff Dean ... and other senior employees pledged to “neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons.” Google signed the classified deal, yet they remain.

> I think he could have stopped the deal, yet he did not. He remains, yet I think he should not.

Is Jeff Dean still considered a saint at Google? If so, how come this doesn't change that? The amicus was enough?

If half of us were half as principled as this guy, the world would be a much better place.

No, they would just walked all over by the 2% who have no principles whatsoever. Kind of like what's happening already.

Principles are only good up until they enable you to be systematically victimized.

Don't play fair in a game others cheat.

Immigration enforcement doesn't sound controversial, but murder should.

It’s because the way it’s being done in the US is unnecessarily brutal and arbitrarily discriminates more against people from certain countries.

Vast majority of people against it seem to be against the principle, not against the implementation.

People tend to agree that immigration enforcement can be necessary (except for that pocket of philosophical bohemians that accept that people should be able to flow as free or freer than capital if we are truly free at all). But interestingly, most people feel immigrants that did not enter through legal means should be able to stay in a lot of circumstances!

People almost universally agree that stripping citizenship from naturalized citizens is way too far (no cite here, just recalling a recent read).

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/22/most-amer...

There is something fishy about where someone happened to be born (or looks/sounds like they’re from), where they are, and the relationships between different government blowhards having a bigger impact on their life than just being a decent person trying to get by.

Yeah, but part of that is that national sovereignty is a just-so-happens meme of an idea that sticks around because we all agree that it should and alternative arrangements could be worse.

On the other hand, people dying is a real concept. Their deaths because some people think that other people shouldn't be around and appealing to national sovereignty to enforce that is a leap into the absurd.

At the end of the day, societal institutions exist because we choose by action and by decision to support them. If they aren't supported, the world and the trust network become dramatically reduced in size.

What a mess.

Aye. I find it reasonable to reduce it to: if people are dying that shouldn't be killed, time to question how we got there.

I think you might be accidentally or willingly misunderstanding the context if that is your takeaway -- no one, neither immigrant nor innocent bystander, should be killed because administrative warrants are being enforced. And ICE doesn't require hundreds of individuals deployed to one place. There simply was never a reason for such a surge.

EDIT: to the dead comment below -- your comment doesn't have to meet my approval -- the comment is simply at odds with reality and is a thought terminating cliche.

Feel free to take it in a more general framing: if you don't want people you don't support, while they are in power, killing people, take time to understand why others might be upset. Not only is it your civic duty, its also part of being in society.

Is the idea that with worse technology, DHS will kill fewer people?

Is it binary? I don't think the technology is the core issue, the concern is over the people enforcing and the policies governing their actions -- the technology becomes a flashpoint when the prior two are issues. Scaling bad actions and actors even though the tech itself is neutral.

TFA's point is really getting at that -- who is accountable for scaling bad actions and actors?

What would you do instead?

Honestly? A few ideas

1. US aid abroad to help stem the conditions that drive many of the migrants to flee their homes. Build up institutions, enforcement, and anti-corruption frameworks so these nations can better build themselves. I'd even be open to hawkish approaches -- frankly it's been surprisingly to see the positive responses to Venezuelan interference by the US.

2. Immigration enforcement needs use-of-force accountability and less lethal approaches. The specific clashes between protesters and ICE come from actions that appear practically designed to encourage confrontation. Agents that kill innocent people should also be held accountable, meaning civil liability reform is necessary.

3. Ensuring we have a shared reality -- hold organizations accountable when they lie or disinform. Example - the majority of immigrants aren't actually criminals, nor are they "stealing jobs" in any coherent way -- studies show that many immigration policies have been net positive on communities. So when Fox News or similar organizations bring up random anti-immigrant commentary, dressed as news instead of entertainment, there really should be consequences for misinforming.

4. Targeted investigations instead of street sweeps. While Kavanaugh stops may be legal, like many enforcement policies over the years they are less effective unless the goal is "enforce stereotypes broadly."

I mean, you have an immigration policy or you don’t have one. If you have one, you need to enforce it. The unfortunate truth is that any attempt at law enforcement sometimes leads to deaths, and it doesn’t matter what you’re enforcing. The US should not have responsibility to solve all of the rest of the world’s problems to justify enforcing it’s borders.

Third option: realize the effect of the policy is undesirable and change it.

This is false.

> Good was in her car, stopped sideways in the street, which led Ross to circle her vehicle on foot. Other agents approached, and one ordered her to get out of the car while reaching through her open window. Good briefly reversed, then began moving forward and to the right, into the direction of traffic. At this point, Ross was standing several feet away at the front-left of the vehicle which was turning away, when he fired three shots, killing her.

[0] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/08/questions-follow-af...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good

> Good briefly reversed, then began moving forward

No one disputes this. She and the others were deliberately antagonizing agents first. They were not random innocent third parties. She deliberately ignored the lawful orders of armed officers and drove towards them. In almost any other situation involving police, no one would be surprised if this happened.

Real police are trained not to stand in front of or reach into vehicles.

Reading comprehension is critical to ensure you don't ignore the whole picture, which you are doing.

> began moving forward and to the right, into the direction of traffic

You can watch the videos from neutral sources if you're concerned. There was no one in her way.

Perhaps it would be helpful to understand that people feel it necessary to flag the comment -- I tried to explain it in my parent comment here.

It’s not necessary at all, it’s grassroots ideological censorship.

I mean, on the one hand, I support this. But this is going pretty far. When it comes to non-US police and military, if your threshold is killing 2 innocents (and the officers getting away with it), then you can't do business almost anywhere ...

With essentially any country, and even vaguely similar circumstances

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/05/belgian-police...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/20/belgian-police...

And this is just a random example country (with excellent beer), you will find worse than this in most/all European countries, especially in the last 10 years or so.

This is pretty different - in both of those, the officer faced consequences. Unidentified masked ICE officers have killed about a person a month with no consequences, many times over a civil concern (immigration status) or just getting annoyed with protesters who broke no laws. ICE is effectively a lethal extrajudicial force with no means of seeking accountability when they kill.

On top of that, they are acting aggressively and violently in broad daylight solely to terrorize immigrant communities. The chilling effect is very visible in hospital systems right now - I have seen far less Hispanics in the hospital for medical emergencies, and that includes people who are in this country legally.

IOW: "if I have to kill only 2-3 people to make the business I want to make, then, bah, so be it".

its more like: good luck finding clients who don't kill anyone somewhere deep inside their supply chain.

What are dishonest mischaracterization of the issue at hand, shame on you

your straw man is misrepresenting the scale of violence ICE has inflicted on communities across the country. the article states it was after Alex Pirettis death that he was inspired to act. ICE has killed many people across the country during activities which they have no business conducting. A man in Houston was killed last week, then days later, another in Maine. They’ve shot citizens and fabricated evidence to cover up their actions in multiple instances.

Wake the fuck up and stop trying to whatabout your way to a more comfortable mental state.

> They’ve shot citizens and fabricated evidence to cover up their actions in multiple instances.

typical police activity protected by impunity in this country.

i don’t think statements like this help reinforce how serious the situation is; rather, it subtly normalizes it.

Normal/not normal is a matter of opinion.

It sounds like it is normal for majority of political elite as well as voters, since this is not top of political agenda in this country.

It is not normal from my point of view, but I am not sure what can I do about this.

at a micro/personal level, absolutely keep having the tough conversation that it’s not okay if the topics arise in your circles. encourage others to reflect on the issue more if they seem apathetic, and paint various pictures to help folks overcome their own biases.

conjuring empathy in others is not easy, but it is worth it.

This is a long post about someone who has very obviously just gotten into politics. It is good for people to try and see how to impart change. Here are some constructive critical questions for the author:

1. Why no mention of No Tech For Apartheid or Google Workers United, who have been doing similar work for years?

2. What about all of the other police, DHS, and military contracts Google has been a part of? Did this problem really just start with the second (not even the first!) Trump presidency?

3. What does a focus on exclusively those at the top levels of a hierarchy, with minimal focus on incentive structures and wider systems, say about your theory of change? Was there a power analysis done, or was it assumed that "big title" = "powerful"?

Side Note: Incredibly insulting of James Dean to say email 3 CEOs.

I don't hold it against people for only caring about one or two issues. In addition to many plausible explanations, people like OP who take a stand are already doing so much.

I for sure agree about encouraging people to dig deeper and wider, and that absolutely none of this is new or is occurring in a vacuum, but (and I don't say this to single you out, this is just a long-held feeling I've had) I do also think it's important to encourage and commend anyone who reaches these conclusions, however late or nascent they might be. Especially someone with the backbone to speak out at and then quit a cushy, prestigious job.

Something something every journey, something something single step. For the author (and for all of us, really) I hope it's one of many. And I think they should be proud of this particular step :)