Google Employees Quite En Masse To Protest Pentagon Job

For months, several people at Google have been asking the company to cease working on the project that it received from the Pentagon to train artificial intelligence in more accurate image-recognition. This will then be used to make drones more precise in distinguishing people and objects. With the company’s refusal to listen to the employees, many of them have decided to quit in protest.

The reason that the employees have stated with regards to why they are resigning are the ethical concerns that they have in turning AI into a weapon, Gizmodo reports. Apparently, they also find the fact that they are the ones who have to develop said AI weapon through Project Maven even more distasteful.

Accounts of their experiences were also written down by several of the Google employees who decided to quit, and it does not paint an encouraging picture. It would seem that executives at the company have become increasingly less transparent with regards to the controversial projects that it is taking on. The employees also stated that their opinions now matter less and less.

Now, it is worth noting that only the side of the employees has been made public, so far. Google still has to address these issues and provide its side of the story.

However, if these allegations do end up being true, they would be contrary to the values that the search engine giant was founded upon. Google had always prided itself on an open culture, where employees are encouraged to speak their minds and challenge authority when necessary.

As protests go, this is a first for the company since mass resignations aren’t exactly something that the tech giant experiences every day. More to the point, these employees are not the only ones expressing disapproval of the project, either.

The International Committee for Robot Arms Control also wrote a letter to Google asking the company to stop working on the project, Forbes reports. The letter and the protest remain unheeded.