It seems that bad news just keeps pouring in for Google. Earlier today we reported that Google was being investigated in Australia over the claims that it was harvesting data from millions of Android users who were unknowingly paying the telecos for gigabytes of data used during data harvesting. And now word is that Google employees are quitting the company to protest against its involvement in Project Maven.
For those of you who don't know, Project Maven is an initiative by the US Department of Defence which aims to integrate the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in the US military. The project aims to speed up the analysis of military footage captured by the drones by AI to differentiate between humans and objects. We first heard about the project on Monday when Gizmodo reported that "a dozen" of the Google staffers had resigned to protest against the project.
However, Google's involvement in the project has triggered massive protests within the company and now nearly 4,000 Google employees, out of the 85,000 Alphabet employees, have signed an internal petition asking Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai to end the tech giant's support for Project Maven and halt the "business of war".
In the letter, Google employees while citing the company's history of avoiding involvement in military work and its motto of "Don't Be Evil" urge the company bosses to cancel Project Maven and draft and publicise a clear policy stating that neither the company nor its contractors would build war technology. "We cannot outsource the moral responsibility of our technologies to third parties...This contract puts Google's reputation at risk and stands in direct opposition to our core values. Building this technology to assist the US Government in military surveillance- and potentially lethal outcomes- is not acceptable," the letter states.
Meanwhile, scholars and academicians have penned an open letter addressed to Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc Larry Page, CEO of Google Cloud Diane Green and company's other top executives in support of the Google employees and tech workers. In their letter, the researchers have not only asked the company executives to terminate its contract with the US military but also urged them to join other AI researchers and tech executive to call for an international treaty prohibiting autonomous weapon systems. "Should Google decide to use global internet users' personal data for military purposes, it would violate the public trust that is fundamental to its business by putting its users' lives and human rights in jeopardy," the letter states.