Google opens door to AI-powered weapons, surveillance

The company that once opened its code of conduct with the words “Don’t be evil” is now opening the door to assisting in the creation of AI-powered weapons and surveillance systems.

Changes in the company’s statement of AI principles introduced in a blog post on Tuesday remove the company’s earlier prohibition on engaging in such activities, leaving it much more wiggle room in an ethical area that has often brought it into conflict with its own staff.

The blog post by Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, and James Manyika, Google’s SVP for research, labs, technology & society, skated around the omission, instead focussing on three new core tenets: bold innovation, responsible development and deployment, and collaborative progress together.

In the full text of Google’s new AI principles, the section on responsible development and deployment says “This means implementing appropriate human oversight, due diligence, and feedback mechanisms to align with user goals, social responsibility, and widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

Google’s previous AI principles — archived by the Wayback Machine — listed seven principles and then added four prohibitions under the heading “AI applications we will not pursue”. These included:

Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.

Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.

Those prohibitions are notably absent from the new principles.

A year ago, OpenAI similarly deleted a self-imposed ban on the military use of OpenAI technology.