A dozen Google employees have resigned to protest against the supply of artificial intelligence systems to the US military, in order to speed up the processes of analysis and recognition of photographs and aerial shots taken by drones. The resignation concerns US employees and comes months after the first news on the controversial ongoing collaboration between Google and the Pentagon, called “Project Maven”. For now, the company has not disclosed comments on the affair, which has been extensively told by the technological information site Gizmodo based on the testimonies of several Google employees and some internal documents.
The people who decided to step down told Gizmodo that they haven't received convincing answers from Google executives, who seem to be less willing than they used to be to listen to their employees. For years, the company has encouraged an open and honest discussion within it, inviting employees to comment on the work done and the products, both in the case of services for individual users and for those intended for large organizations. Several employees said they were disappointed by the low consideration they received after their reports.
At least 4,000 Google employees have signed an internal petition against Project Maven, in which they ask the company to close the project as soon as possible and to review company policies so as not to engage in future partnerships with the military. The news about Project Maven had begun to circulate at the end of February, leading Google to promise in a short time the publication of a document on the use of its artificial intelligence systems, in which to indicate limits and conditions of use. More than two months later, Gizmodo writes, there is still no trace of the document.
Google claims that its involvement in Project Maven is linked to the use of freely accessible open-source software, which the Pentagon could therefore use even without the technical assistance that the company offers for a fee. Google's artificial intelligence systems are not used directly to organize drone missions, but the fact that they are used to map geographic areas and distinguish targets according to some employees is reason enough to ask for the collaboration to be closed.
The Project Maven story opens up bigger questions that go beyond the specific case and more generally involve artificial intelligence solutions, which are increasingly powerful and widespread. More than 90 experts and scholars of ethics, computer science and artificial intelligence have signed an open letter asking Google to stop working with the Pentagon. The letter mentions the need to work on international treaties that prohibit the use of automatic systems for the use of weapons. According to the signatories, the collaboration of Google and other large companies such as Amazon and IBM in the military sector could accelerate the development of fully autonomous weapons, making their control increasingly difficult.
