Over 600 Google employees are urging CEO Sundar Pichai to reject a potential deal with the Pentagon that would allow the company's artificial intelligence to be used in classified military operations. The employees expressed their concerns in an open letter, stating, "We want to see AI benefit humanity, not being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways." This sentiment includes opposition to lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
The letter, signed by staff across various Google divisions, highlights negotiations over the potential use of its Gemini AI model in classified settings. "Classified workloads are by definition opaque," an organizing employee noted, raising concerns about the inability to ensure tools wouldn't be leveraged for "terrible harms or erode civil liberties away from public scrutiny."
This situation mirrors broader industry pressure on tech companies to clarify their AI's military and intelligence applications. The letter draws parallels to a past employee protest in 2018 that led Google to withdraw from Project Maven, a Pentagon initiative. The current staff demand, "We believe that Google should not be in the business of war."