Employees protest against Google because of its working on military intelligence

Thousands of Google employees have signed a petition demanding that CEO Sundar Pichai step out of the company's partnership on artificial intelligence technology with the US Department of Defense. For the first time, Google was involved in Project Maven last month, where it was reported that the company would help the US Department of Defense use artificial intelligence to analyze footage captured by unmanned aircraft. Despite assurances that its participation is limited to non-combatants, Google employees want the company to back down.

The New York Times reported that more than 3,100 employees at Google have signed the petition, knowing that it has been published through Google's internal communications systems a few weeks ago. The petition does not doubt the company's assertions that its work will be limited to non-combat use, but it highlights the possibility that the military will re-use Google's artificial intelligence technology in combat once handed over.

Google told the newspaper that the US Department of Defense will use "an open source object identification program available to any Google Cloud customer" based on unclassified data. This technique will be used to refer to images captured by unmanned aircraft for human review.

The first line in the petition says: "We believe that Google should not be in the field of war." The petition also calls on Google CEO Sundar Pichai to cancel Project Maven. The company also wants to "formulate and publish a clear policy that Google or its contractors will not build war techniques." Others expressed concern that a mere link with the US military would have a negative impact on Google's reputation, especially at a time when a large segment of the public did not tolerate artificial intelligence technology.