Deep conflict at DeepMind

Google DeepMind employees are pushing the company to drop its military contracts. Two hundred workers at the Google AI division, about 5% of its staff, signed a letter earlier this year urging the company to get out of the business of war. The existence of this letter, dated May 16, was first reported by Time on Aug. 23.

While Google supplies cloud services to militaries, including the United States, Google DeepMind signed a pledge in 2018 vowing not to help develop any lethal autonomous weapons.

The signatories don’t specify militaries by name but do link to a report disclosing Google’s contract for cloud services and AI with the Israeli military.

It’s not a major action by employees but demonstrates the debate over where lines might be drawn between military and private sector technologies — even when they involve the same vendors.

For now, the emergence of the letter is unlikely to change anything for a company that currently has billions of dollars worth of military contracts.