Also problems Ukrainian defense needs to solve, and that the Canadian military is trying to solve. This is everyone's problem. It's also biased towards defense use.

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jMyles 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, I think anyone can appreciate that.

But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.

This page literally presents war as if it's a profit vector rather than a societal ill - something that antiwar activists have been claiming is the actual impetus for most conflicts in the world, only to be called conspiracy theorists in response.

It's just totally nauseating.

So while, in the abstract, preventing people from being killed by drone swarms is a great idea, it's tainted from the get-go if the solution is just to make more money by having bigger killing machines, rather than preventing people from wanting/needing to drone swarm other people from the outset.

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jnwatson 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is far ethically superior for Stanford grads to stick to their wheelhouse: optimizing engagement so that their users doomscroll longer.

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Aeolun 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Someone is going to try and kill you with a drone swarm, so no matter how detestable you find it, I think it’s good that there’s people that are thinking of ways to stop that.

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graphime 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.

War has existed for all of human history.

Why do you think humans today are special and will eliminate war?

The only acceptable answer is: you want hope.

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jMyles 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> Why do you think humans today are special and will eliminate war?

Isn't this _the entire point_ of the internet? To evolve beyond states and boundaries and warfare as a way of making decisions about resource allocation?

It strikes me as very short-sighted to decline to act as a generation on this matter. Humans today (or lets say, in these next few centuries) _are_ special; we have arrived at an evolutionary milestone with the birth of a new organism that does seem capable of lasting peace.

	▲	pasc1878 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What a thing invented (or at least large parts) by DARPA. An agency of the United States Department of Defense. You expect that the whole point of something there not to boost the US military?
	▲	zdragnar 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		No... that sounds an awful lot like revisionist history trying to force a utopian ideal where none exists. If anything, the advent of the Internet and social media in particular has made us more tribal, not less. The majority of the Internet is geared towards feeding the hedonistic treadmill of porn, cat pictures, selling things, influencer chasing, faking happiness on Instagram and trolling political sides on X or Blue sky. We aren't better people as a result.
	▲	mhb 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		If you think suicidal fanatics or megalomaniacal dictators are motivated by sub-optimal resource allocation, you haven't been paying attention.
	▲	eigencoder 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't see how we could remove states and boundaries and warfare. Boundaries aren't bad things, they're a natural consequence of living in a natural world