“Google employees resign over dissatisfaction with AI project for Pentagon”
Website Gizmodo reports that about a dozen Google employees are resigning, mainly out of dissatisfaction with a Google project in which artificial intelligence classifies drone images from the Pentagon. There is also dissatisfaction with Google’s broader policy decisions.
According to the outgoing employees, Google executives have become less transparent with staff about controversial business decisions and appear less willing to listen to staff protests. Gizmodo has asked Google to respond to the departing employees, but has not yet received a response.
According to Gizmodo, many of the resigning Google employees wrote down their reasons for leaving, which were then compiled into an internal document. Several sources have laid out its contents to the website, Gizmodo says. The website also says that several former employees have explained their decision to leave Google.
The specific project for the US Pentagon, also known as Project Maven, involves Google software that uses machine learning to interpret video images, which can then be used for military purposes. This would speed up the analysis of drone images, because artificial intelligence is able to classify them, for example, on the presence of people or objects.
The dissatisfaction about this is mainly focused on the fact that Google would be directly involved in warfare because of this project with the Pentagon. Concerned employees fear that the technology will be used, for example, to target drone attacks more effectively, something they believe Google should stay well away from. They believe that not algorithms, but people should be used for this potentially deadly work.
In early April, nearly 4,000 Google employees have already protested against this project. Google has championed Project Maven’s technology. Google CEO Diana Greene has previously said that the technology is not directly used to fly drones or fire weapons.
In addition to dissatisfaction with the way Google-developed AI is being used for the US military, there is also dissatisfaction with Google’s sponsorship of the Conservative Political Action Conference, and criticism of the company’s handling of it. combating discrimination in the workplace.