Despite the strong opposition from employees because of its involvement in the Department of Defense business, Google seems to be still actively promoting cooperation projects with the Pentagon.The Alphabet Union quoted the New York Times report on Twitter that Google’s cloud department has reassigned engineers to participate in the so-called “Joint Operations Cloud Capability Program.”As for the Ministry of National Defense, it described it as an attempt to “gain a dominant position in traditional and non-traditional combat.”
It is reported that the U.S. Department of Defense has opened this contract to many companies, with an estimated amount of billions of dollars, and is currently collecting proposals from various applicant companies.
In a document describing the expected work of cloud providers, the Department of Defense clearly hopes that it “provides advanced data analysis services, and securely implements data-driven and timely decision-making at the tactical level.”
Prior to the strong opposition of employees, Google was forced to formulate the so-called AI ethics code to prevent the company from developing weapons based on AI technology.
Reports in 2018 stated that as part of the Pentagon’s Maven project, Google is developing AI-based technology to analyze video images taken by military drones.
After the incident came to light, thousands of employees sent a co-branded letter to CEO Sundar Pichai, stating that the company should not be involved in war, otherwise it would put Google’s reputation at risk and violate the company’s established values.
In the end, the company level made a concession and said that it would terminate the work on this project.
After the expiration of the Project Maven contract, Google announced the AI Code of Ethics to employees, promising not to engage in AI weapons/surveillance projects that might arouse the anger of human rights or privacy advocates.
On the other hand, Google has made it clear that it will continue to cooperate with the military “in many other areas.” At that time, the company claimed that all the Pentagon jobs involved must conform to these principles.
“The Times” reported that it is not yet clear that the US Department of Defense will agree to Google’s agreement on such guidelines in the contract. But since the announcement of its commitment, Google has still used AI technology in some military cooperation projects.
In August of this year, Google announced that it would use its own cloud service to analyze and inspect images taken by drones to determine when naval ships need maintenance. At the same time, the Air Force also hopes to use Google Cloud to help manage aircraft maintenance.
Recently, a Google spokesperson sentTheVergeSaid in a statement that the company is firmly committed to providing services to public sector customers, which naturally also includes the U.S. Department of Defense.
But in view of Google’s historical record, even if the company is trying to avoid cooperation directly related to the military, employees still pay special attention to such incidents.