Google to drop Pentagon AI contract after employee objections to the ‘business of war’

Washington Post ^ | June 1 at 6:10 PM | Drew Harwell

[BenLurkin]

The tech giant will stop working on its piece of the military’s AI endeavor known as Project Maven when its 18-month contract expires in March, a person familiar with Google’s thinking told The Washington Post.

Diane Greene, the chief executive of Google’s cloud-computing business, told employees of the decision at an internal meeting Friday, first reported by Gizmodo.

Google, which declined to comment, has faced widespread public backlash and employee resignations for helping develop technological tools that could aid in warfighting. The person said Google will soon release new company principles related to the ethical uses of AI.

…

Project Maven was launched in April 2017 to find ways the military could use AI to update its national security and defense capabilities “over increasingly capable adversaries and competitors,” a Defense Department memo stated. In a pilot effort, AI was deployed to analyze hours of footage from Predator drones and other unmanned aircraft, pinpointing buildings and vehicles and processing video now tagged by human analysts.

…

Thousands of Google employees wrote chief executive Sundar Pichai an open letter urging the company to cancel the contract, and many others signed a petition saying the company’s assistance in developing combat-zone technology directly countered the company’s famous “Don’t be evil” motto.

[Okeydoker]

Google is owned and run almost entirely by foreign born dirtbags, mostly Indians. None are americans bybirth or white. So what do you expect?

[cgbg]

If you believe that, we are dummer than a box o rocks. Google just creates a different company with a distracting name, and announces Google has quit the business with righteousness. Google fires all the people involved and the newly created company hires them all up the next day with a raise.

You nailed it. Of course, whatever Google does in this area is a national security secret, so good luck finding out about it.

If their employees believe what Google says--well, you can't fix stupid.

[daltec]

I had a similar experience at an interview once. The interviewer asked if I would have any "issues" working on contracts that supported the military. I remember blinking a few times in honest confusion -- why on earth was I being asked that? Was it one of those trick interview questions?

I asked the interviewer what she meant, and she said that some people have moral concerns about working on contracts that support the military. And I just had to laugh. No, I can assure you, I would not have any issues hahaha.

Got the job!

[fuzzylogic]

Who’d have thought right?

I hope you had great success!!! :)

[GingisK]

Google should still be sued for breach of contract.

[morphing libertarian]

Didn’t they just contract with the chinese for AI?

[morphing libertarian]

http://fortune.com/2017/12/13/google-china-artificial-intelligence/

[Ozark Tom]

Can’t let their body of work, or the people involved fall in with the wrong crowd though can we? Is it classified? Then they can’t exactly work in that niche field of endeavor without a proper security clearance and the supervision that entails.

Patents can and have been classified. Can also put a twist in peoples ability to work in a field for decades if push-comes-to-shove.