Google Employees Are Fed Up, Uneasy About Becoming Israel’s Lackeys
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Hundreds of workers at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI division, have signed a petition calling on the tech giant to cancel contracts with military organizations made this year. The petition is known from a copy of a document reviewed by TIME and five people familiar with the matter.
The letter has been circulating amid growing employee concerns that Google’s AI technology is being sold to militaries involved in war. According to them, this action is a violation of Google’s AI rules.
The petition, signed by 200 employees, is a sign of growing discord within Google, at least among some AI division workers who have pledged never to work on military technology. Also on the Cloud business that has contracts to sell Google services, including AI developed in DeepMind, to several governments and militaries including Israel and the United States. The petition represents about 5% of DeepMind’s total number of employees, as quoted from the TIME report, Friday (8/23/2024). The DeepMind employee petition, dated May 16 this year, begins with a statement that workers are “concerned by recent reports about Google’s contracts with military organizations.”
The petition does not refer to any specific military, they only say “we emphasize that this letter is not about the geopolitics of a particular conflict.”
However, the petition links to a TIME report last April that revealed that Google has a direct contract to supply cloud computing and AI services to the Israeli military, called Project Nimbus.
The letter also links to other news stories alleging that the Israeli military is using AI to conduct mass surveillance and target selection for its bombing campaign in Gaza, and that Israeli arms companies are required by the government to buy cloud services from Google and Amazon.
“Any involvement with military and weapons manufacturing compromises our position as a leader in ethical and responsible AI, and is contrary to our mission statement and stated AI Principles,” the letter circulated within Google DeepMind said. The principles state the company will not pursue AI applications that are likely to cause overall harm, contribute to weapons or other technologies whose primary purpose or implementation is to cause harm, or build technologies whose purpose conflicts with widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.
The letter said its signatories are concerned with “ensuring that Google’s AI Principles are upheld,” adding, “We believe [DeepMind’s] leadership shares our concerns.”
A Google spokesperson said that when developing AI technology and making it available to customers, it adheres to the company’s AI Principles, which outline a commitment to developing technology responsibly.
“We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who have agreed to abide by our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy,” a Google spokesperson said.
“This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” he added.
SOURCE : CNBC INDONESIA
