Tech workforce speaking up on issues
Firms say they respect employees’ diverse views
SAN FRANCISCO — When Liz O’sullivan was hired at the New York City-based artificial intelligence company Clarifai in 2017, she felt lucky to find work at the intersection of two of her main interests: technology and ethics. Two years later, she encountered a moral dilemma.
Clarifai was developing aerial photography and object detection tools as part of Project Maven, a Pentagon drone surveillance program. After talking to friends and colleagues, O’sullivan realized that technology eventually could be used for autonomous weapons.
In January, she wrote to Clarifai CEO Matt Zeiler on behalf of a group of employees, asking whether the technology would be used for weapons and urging him to commit to a series of ethical measures. After Zeiler acknowledged Clarifai likely would provide tech for autonomous weapons, O’sullivan quit.
O’sullivan, 34, considers herself part of a “growing backlash against unethical tech,” a groundswell in the past two years in which U.S. tech employees have tried to remake the industry from the inside out.
Amazon and Microsoft employees demanded that the companies stop providing services to software company Palantir, which provides technology to the U.S. Army and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Following last year’s walkouts over Google’s handling of sexual misconduct cases, employees signed a letter protesting Project Dragonfly, a search engine that would comply with Chinese censorship.
Salesforce, Microsoft and Google staff have protested their companies’ ties to Customs and Border Protection, ICE and the military.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on employee activism but said the Seattle-based company is committed to sustainability and provides good pay and benefits and humane warehouse conditions. A Microsoft spokesperson said the company respects differing views and provides “many avenues for all voices to be heard.”
A Google spokesperson did not comment on specific incidents but said retaliation is prohibited and pointed to CEO Sundar Pichai’s previous statements on worker dissent. “There are many things good about giving employees a lot of voice,” he said at a November conference.