Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Google plans to discontinue a project through which it has been helping the US military use artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage.

More details:

Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene reportedly announced the decision on Friday during a weekly internal meeting. Greene said that the contract is set to expire in 2019 and that Google will not pursue a follow-up bid. She said the decision was the result of backlash the company has faced since details of its drone warfare artificial intelligence (AI), Project Maven, were reported. Earlier this month, thousands of Google employees signed a letter asking the company to drop its contract with the government over Project Maven, and a dozen quit in protest as well.

About Project Maven:

Project Maven, also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team. It was launched in April 2017 by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work. Project Maven is designed to swiftly pull important data from vast quantities of imagery.

Among its objectives, the project aims to develop and integrate “computer-vision algorithms needed to help military and civilian analysts encumbered by the sheer volume of full-motion video data that DoD collects every day in support of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations,” according to the Pentagon.

The Project Maven contract is also apparently worth more than Google executives once said that its partnership with Department of Defense is around $15 million instead of the $9 million that was previously reported. Its budget also had the possibility of growing to as much as $250 million. Additionally, emails show that Google planned to build a surveillance system for the Pentagon that would let analysts “click on a building and see everything associated with it.”

Over 3,100 Google employees protested in April for this. In an open letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai, Google employees expressed concern that the U.S. military could weaponize AI and apply the technology towards refining drone strikes and other kinds of lethal attacks. According to them, “ Google should not be in the business of war”. 

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