Workers at Google DeepMind Push Company to Drop Military Contracts

Nearly 200 Google DeepMind workers signed a letter urging Google to cease its military contracts, expressing concerns that the AI technology they develop is being used in warfare, which they believe violates Google's own AI ethics principles. 'The letter is a sign of a growing dispute within Google between at least some workers in its AI division -- which has pledged to never work on military technology -- and its Cloud business, which has contracts to sell Google services, including AI developed inside DeepMind, to several governments and militaries including those of Israel and the United States,' reports TIME Magazine. 'The signatures represent some 5% of DeepMind's overall headcount -- a small portion to be sure, but a significant level of worker unease for an industry where top machine learning talent is in high demand.' From the report: The DeepMind letter, dated May 16 of this year, begins by stating that workers are 'concerned by recent reports of Google's contracts with military organizations.' It does not refer to any specific militaries by name -- saying 'we emphasize that this letter is not about the geopolitics of any particular conflict.' But it links out to an April report in TIME which revealed that Google has a direct contract to supply cloud computing and AI services to the Israeli Military Defense, under a wider contract with Israel called Project Nimbus. The letter also links to other stories alleging that the Israeli military uses AI to carry out mass surveillance and target selection for its bombing campaign in Gaza, and that Israeli weapons firms are required by the government to buy cloud services from Google and Amazon.

'Any involvement with military and weapon manufacturing impacts our position as leaders in ethical and responsible AI, and goes against our mission statement and stated AI Principles,' the letter that circulated inside Google DeepMind says. (Those principles state the company will not pursue applications of AI that are likely to cause 'overall harm,' contribute to weapons or other technologies whose 'principal purpose or implementation' is to cause injury, or build technologies 'whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.') The letter says its signatories are concerned with 'ensuring that Google's AI Principles are upheld,' and adds: 'We believe [DeepMind's] leadership shares our concerns.'

The letter calls on DeepMind's leaders to investigate allegations that militaries and weapons manufacturers are Google Cloud users; terminate access to DeepMind technology for military users; and set up a new governance body responsible for preventing DeepMind technology from being used by military clients in the future. Three months on from the letter's circulation, Google has done none of those things, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. 'We have received no meaningful response from leadership,' one said, 'and we are growing increasingly frustrated.'

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