More than 200 employees at Google's AI research and development division, DeepMind, are unhappy with the defense contracts the company has won, and they circulated a letter internally in May expressing their discontent, according to Time.
In a May 16 letter, the signatories expressed concern about “Google’s contracts with military organizations,” citing an article about the tech giant’s contract to provide AI and cloud computing services to the Israeli military.
“Any association with the military or weapons manufacturing would undermine our standing as a leader in ethical and responsible AI and would run counter to our mission statement and stated AI principles,” the letter added.
Although it’s a relatively small percentage of the organization’s staff, the memo hints at a cultural clash between Google and DeepMind, which acquired the company in 2014 and pledged in 2018 not to use DeepMind’s technology for military or surveillance purposes.
