Inside Google Cloud, employees call the weekly meeting as the Weather Report. The outside world knew very little about this until last Friday, when this particular name spread across Silicon Valley and even the entire U.S. Internet circle.
At the regular meeting on Friday, Diane Greene, who also serves as Google Cloud’s CEO and a member of the Google Board of Directors, announced that Google will terminate Project Maven’s cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense after this contract expires. Expert plan).
Like the horn of victory, the news spread like wildfire inside Google and quickly spread to the media. The publication of a headline report marked the "battle" that took place between the technical team and the management team. The victory of the former finally ended.
Going back and looking at Google’s internal battles over the past three months, you will find that this is destined to be only a story that happened in Google, a story that is destined to be included in the history of the company. The outcome is the best proof that the legendary Internet giant, who founded the entire twenty years, once again chose the latter between political pressure, commercial interests, and technological ideals.
Secret contract
The story begins with a report in early March.
On March 6th this year, according to Gizmodo, who first received reports from insiders, Google has reached a cooperation with the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) to help the latter develop an artificial intelligence system for drones, project codename Project Maven.
The next day, The Intercept issued follow-up reports, saying that the Pentagon secretly passed an intermediary company named ECS Federal when signing with Google, so this cooperation has not been discovered. At the same time, because of Google’s internal confidentiality requirements for employees, this cooperation incident was initially spread only within the company through intranet mail. When media such as Gizmodo received public reports, related topics have been discussed in Google for nearly a week.
During the internal discussions, many Google employees expressed their anger at Project Maven’s strong dissatisfaction. Some of them think that Google is opening up resources for the Pentagon to help the latter to create drone surveillance technology. Some people also question whether Google is so ethical in using machine learning technology. They think that the Pentagon will use this technology. Weapons of killing, in turn, brought about the harm that technical optimists never wanted to cause.
The year 2017 is a year when governments around the world have clearly realized the importance of artificial intelligence and taken action. The Chinese government has introduced a number of policies to support artificial intelligence. Putin also publicly published such sensational views as "the leader in artificial intelligence will dominate the world" and "the future war will be completed by drones".
Against this background, in April 2017, the US Department of Defense that had not invested heavily in the field of artificial intelligence decided to start Project Maven. The United States and the Internet giants, which have the largest number of artificial intelligence talents in the world, have accelerated their efforts to create military supplies. Frontier computer vision systems used by square drones. Project Maven, also known as the Algorithmic War Interagency Team (AWCFT), is designed to "accelerate machine learning and the integration of big data with DoD applications."
Although the Pentagon has never disclosed cooperation with any specific company, it is not a difficult task for the outside world to find suspicious targets. Project Maven has an advisory team called the "US Defense Innovation Council," which was originally founded by former US Defense Secretary Ash Carter to bridge the technology gap between the Pentagon and the Silicon Valley industry. Most of the committee members are senior executives of American computer and Internet giants, whose chairman is Eric Schmidt, who is currently a member of the Alphabet Board of Google’s parent company. According to media reports, the companies in which the various consultant team members including Schmidt are located have the ability to directly provide assistance to the Pentagon.
In response, Schmidt, who was pushed to the cusp, said that he assumed this role to ensure that the military is using the technology for the purpose of protecting the country's security. He believes that "at least this should be allowed (military and Silicon Valley). There is a dialogue between." Schmidt also emphasized that the Department of Defense did not use Google’s technology for combat purposes.
Obviously, Schmidt's explanation does not satisfy employees. Google’s highly skilled employees quickly set off a new wave of protests.
4,000 joint petitions
At the beginning of April, Sundar Pichai, CEO of more than 3,100 Google employees and joint-signed company, expressed their resistance to Project Maven.
"We think Google should not be a war business," the employees said in the letter, they asked Google to set a new rule: Google and its contract companies can never participate in the war technology project. For employees, projects such as Project Maven will not only damage the reputation of the company, but will also adversely affect Google’s future recruitment. “Google’s unique history, its motto of “do no evil,” and its ability to reach hundreds of millions of users directly are the reasons why it is unique.”
"Google's values have been made very clear: Every one of our users trusts us. Never break this trust and never." The employees emphasized in the letter.
This petition spread within Google for several weeks and eventually yielded about 4,000 signatures, including some high-level engineers.
After the petition was revealed, Google responded by stating that “any military use of machine learning will naturally cause some legitimate concerns”, but Google is actively promoting comprehensive discussions on this important topic within the company. Although Google said that such exchanges are “very important and helpful,” the New York Times’ exposurers are still afraid to publicly expose their identities for fear of reprisals.
In response, Google re-emphasized that the technology provided to the Pentagon is but an open source object recognition software (TensorFlow API) that can be used by any Google Cloud user. "This technology is used to mark human audited images in order to save lives." And save time for those who work in boring jobs."
Just as Google rushed to appease the mood of its employees, its rivals “bumped” with the Pentagon: Amazon touted its own image recognition work with the Department of Defense, and Microsoft won the military's cloud for confidential data. Service order.
In the commercialization of cloud services, Google Cloud has lagged behind Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. Therefore, as the leader of Google Cloud, Diane Green has not made any significant achievements since he took office. He hopes to use this time with the Ministry of National Defense. The cooperation won more orders in the future.
Ironically, the media discovered that at the end of April, Google deleted three emphasises from its eight-year motto “Don't be evil” at the beginning of the company’s code of conduct. At the end of the guideline, there is a sentence that has not yet been deleted: "Remember, don't be evil. If you see something that you think is not correct, speak out!"
Resignation storm
The incident developed into mid-May. Google’s employees protested for nearly three months. Many senior executives including Greene, Pichchai and even company founder Sergey Brin did not respond positively. Even fearing that employees were aware of the larger protests caused by their employees, Google management is still "sneaking" to bid for another Defense Department cloud service project.
More than a dozen employees who were desperate for the management were desperate and decided to hand in their letters of resignation and take the initiative to leave the company. "In the past few months, I have responded to these responses and the way they treated people and listened to people's concerns. The more disappointed it was."
"From a certain moment, I suddenly realized that I didn't have enough faith to recommend someone to join Google. I thought clearly, if I can't recommend someone to join here, then why would I still stay here?" said one resigned employee. . "I try to remind myself that this is Google's decision, not mine. I don't have to take personal responsibility for everything they do. If I can make the incident escalate, then I think this is my responsibility." Another employee said.
In the 20 years since Google was founded, this company, which has always been comfortable in work environment and cultural freedom, has never experienced such a grim situation today. This turmoil in the history of Google’s biggest resignation has really sounded a wake-up call for management and led directly to Google’s decision to compromise on protesters.
At the "weather forecast" regular meeting on June 1st, Diane Green announced that the company will terminate Project Maven's cooperation after the contract expires in 2019 with the Pentagon.
"We have always said that this is only a 18-month contract, so in March 2019, it will end." Green said at the meeting, "and we will not renew."
So far, Google's internal three-month protests have come to an end. It finally ended in a compromise between management and employees.
But two days before Green’s announcement, the New York Times released an introductory article on internal mail, and we only saw the real reason behind Google’s “soft service”.
Torn Google
Not all employees are completely opposed to Google’s cooperation with the Pentagon. Some people think that Google’s competitors, Microsoft, and Amazon are making a lot of money from cooperation with the defense military. Within the two companies, few protesters have prevented the company from pursuing more interests.
On April 2nd, the U.S. government added $100 million in investment to Project Maven, and the Defense Department also issued a $10 billion cloud service bidding project. This is obviously a big cake that should not be missed by sales and management.
At a corporate-wide meeting, Green explained that Google Cloud’s contract with the Pentagon has not been used for fatal purposes, and that this is only a small contract worth US$9 million. The purpose of management is also very obvious. They hope to pass this The 18-month contract will instigate more larger business in the future.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin also responded to a series of questions about Project Maven. He said he had a serious discussion with another founder Larry Page and Sandal Pichchai. Considering that international companies like Google are involved in such contracts is a good thing for peace – compared to some nationalist companies.
At the same meeting that Brin had, CEO Pichchai said that Google will introduce a "time-tested" rule that stipulates that Google will avoid ethical minefields in its future outsourcing business with the defense and intelligence agencies. It can be seen that at the time, neither Brin, who was president of Alphabet, nor Google CEO Pichai, they did not intend to completely put down the fat of the Ministry of Defense.
Among the many emails exposed, Li Feifei is a key name. The Chinese-American Google Cloud chief scientist has a pivotal position in both academic and industrial circles. In Google Cloud, she is in management but she is also a researcher. Because of this, Li Feifei became the core figure connecting the management and technical team in this storm.
In September last year, when Google had just signed a contract with the Pentagon, Scott Frohman, who was responsible for the sale of the government, sought “public relations assistance” for Li Feifei and others, hoping to find a suitable way to make the contract public without controversy.
From the email, we can see that Google Cloud's colleagues gave Li Feifei the right of decision. The latter believes that the company should publicly promote this cooperation as a "great victory for the Google Cloud Platform." She strongly advises “very cautious” in constructing the plan. She said in an email, “If the media started to use Google as a cover for AI weapons or as a weaponized AI technology for the defense industry, I don’t know that. What will happen."
In particular, Li Feifei mentioned that he hopes the company will try to avoid using the two letters “AI” when discussing this cooperation. “At any cost to avoid mentioning or implying AI, weaponized AI may be one of the most sensitive topics in artificial intelligence—perhaps not even one. For media that wants to hurt Google, this is simply A mouthful of fresh meat."
Li Feifei has always stood by the good side of artificial intelligence, "the weaponization of AI is a serious violation of the principle of all my research work," she responded afterwards.
In addition to Google Cloud, key players in other companies’ internal AI areas also spoke in this incident.
DeepMind is one of the active participants in this protest. As early as 2014, when Google acquired DeepMind, the contract expressly stated that the latter refused to provide technology for any military and surveillance purposes. A number of DeepMind employees participated in the signature campaign of the joint letter, and its founder, Mustafa Suleyman, was directly involved in the Google leadership discussions on establishing policies related to Project Maven.
Jeff Dean, head of Google’s artificial intelligence division, received an interview with the media on a recent Google I/O. He said he has signed a joint application that opposes the use of machine learning technology in automated weapons. The letter expresses its stand on the opposite side of weaponized AI.
Regrettably, Diane Green did not listen to the opinions of Li Feifei and others. Google did not disclose this cooperation with the Pentagon. As a result, many months later, the cooperation brought innumerable employees on the company's internal network to speak out. criticism.
"Speak out loud"
Google has always had an outspoken tradition. This is where Google joins Google, claiming that Googler employees are most proud.
In 2015, Google’s employees had successfully forced the company to withdraw its ban on pornographic content on blogging platforms; in 2017, employees issued a memorandum to reflect overly politically correct issues within the company, which triggered heated discussions throughout the company, including piazza Many executives, including Iraq, had to publicly reflect.
On the other hand, Google's internal atmosphere is full of technical ideals, and technology geeks are rushing to the company with the motto of “Do No Evil”. In the 20 years since its founding, numerous talents have gathered here, and Google has thus grown to become today's Internet giant, becoming the second-biggest presence in the artificial intelligence industry.
Google’s culture is rooted in this open-minded company environment. Those Googlers who jointly petitioned and even sadly left are the faithful believers of this open culture. Like the phrase "not too willing to delete" in its code of conduct: "Remember, don't be evil, if you see something that you think is not correct, speak out!" When a company made a divergence At the beginning of the day, its employees did not hesitate to leave the company to force the company back on track. This is exactly what employees expect from the company.
In the discussion about Project Maven, one view was that even if Google were to withdraw, the Pentagon would cooperate with other companies, and ultimately only Google would suffer losses.
In response, many people have expressed their refusal to such naive views that "I don't do bad things and others do it." But it is undeniable that today, as artificial intelligence is increasingly valued by governments of all countries, the US Department of Defense cannot be dismissed because of the withdrawal of a company. Armed AI may have become an unavoidable trend.
Under the trend, the rising protests of Google employees may be seen as immature by competitors and Department of Defense officials, but this practice has become a rare precedent for the industry as a whole.
In mid-April, after the launch of Google’s internal joint petition, some of the tech giant’s employees united to launch a petition online that required cloud service giants such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon to no longer bid for the Defense Department contract. .
A company may not be able to change the world's trends (whether good or bad), but it can at least be a positive example.