Google is going through a very complicated situation these days, after a number of employees announced their decision to resign as a form of protest for a dangerous project in which the American company entered. More precisely, I told you some time ago that Google entered into a collaboration with the American Pentagon to use artificial intelligence in order to identify people and objects from the recordings made by the US army drones.
Google will be without at least 12 important employees because it decided to collaborate with the Pentagon in this project, the employees fearing that the use of artificial intelligence in projects of this kind is something dangerous. The reality is that they are right, because the US Army could demand the use of artificial intelligence during the missions carried out by drones, everything has to start somewhere, and in this case the beginning is the analysis of the footage from the missions.
Google: Employees RESIGN because of a Dangerous Project
Google has publicly stated that this collaboration is done strictly for the analysis of footage taken by drones and that its artificial intelligence is not going to be used for malicious purposes by the US military. Google employees also complain about the fact that company managers no longer discuss with employees the decisions to get involved in projects of this kind, although the impact is very big for the whole world, not just for the company.
"We can no longer ignore our industry's and our technologies' harmful biases, large-scale breaches of trust, and lack of ethical safeguards. These have life and death stakes. If ethical action on the part of tech companies requires consideration of who might benefit from a technology and who might be harmed, then we can say with certainty that no topic deserves more sober reflection—no technology has higher stakes—than algorithms meant to target and kill at a distance and without public accountability."
Google would be involved in another Pentagon tender for a cloud-type project known as Project JEDI, but official data regarding the company's involvement there are not yet publicly known. If Google will really get involved in this project, then we are talking about an extensive collaboration with the US army, and this in the conditions where the employees fear that the company's technologies will be used in wars, even though they were created for other purposes.