Google will not renew Pentagon contract that upset employees

Employees demanded clear policy stating that Google will never build warfare technology Reuters

Google, hoping to head off a rebellion by employees upset that the technology they were working on could be used for lethal purposes, will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work when a current deal expires next year.

Diane Greene, who is the head of the Google Cloud business that won a contract with the Pentagon’s Project Maven, said during a weekly meeting with employees that the company was backing away from its AI work with the military, according to a person familiar with the discussion but not permitted to speak publicly about it.

Google’s work with the Defense Department on the Maven program, which uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes, roiled the internet giant’s work force. Many of the company’s top AI researchers, in particular, worried that the contract was the first step toward using the nascent technology in advanced weapons.

But it is not unusual for Silicon Valley’s big companies to have deep military ties. And the internal dissent over Maven stands in contrast to Google’s biggest competitors for selling cloud-computing services — Amazon.com and Microsoft — which have aggressively pursued Pentagon contracts without pushback from their employees.

Google’s self-image is different — it once had a motto of “don’t be evil”. A number of its top technical talent said the internet company was betraying its idealistic principles, even as its businessminded officials worried that the protests would damage its chances to secure more business from the Defense Department.

About 4,000 Google employees signed a petition demanding “a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.” A handful of employees also resigned in protest, while some were openly advocating the company to cancel the Maven contract.

Months before it became public, senior Google officials were worried about how the Maven contract would be perceived inside and outside the company, The New York Times reported this week. By courting business with the Pentagon, they risked angering a number of the company’s highly regarded AI researchers, who had vowed that their work would not become militarised.

Jim Mattis, the defence secretary, had reached out to tech companies and sought their support and cooperation as the Pentagon makes artificial intelligence a centerpiece of its weapons strategy. The decision made by Google is a setback to that outreach.

But if Google drops out of some or all of the competition to sell the software that will guide future weaponry, the Pentagon is likely to find plenty of other companies happy to take the lucrative business. A Defense Department spokeswoman did not reply to a request for comment.

Greene’s comments were reported earlier by Gizmodo.

The money for Google in the Project Maven contract was never large by the standards of a company with revenue of $110 billion last year — $9 million, one official told employees, or a possible $15 million over 18 months, according to an internal email.

But some company officials saw it as an opening to much greater revenue down the road. In an email last September, a Google official in Washington told colleagues she expected Maven to grow into a $250 million-a-year project, and eventually it could have helped open the door to contracts worth far more; notably a multiyear, multibillion-dollar cloud computing project called JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure.

Whether Google’s Maven decision is a short-term reaction to employee protests and adverse news coverage or reflects a more sweeping strategy not to pursue military work is unclear. The question of whether a particular contract contributes to warfare does not always have a simple answer.