Google Makes Impossible Promise of Developing Military Technology with Ethical Principles in Mind

Google used to be a company known as the firm that was on the side of causing no harm. This is why its recent attempt to flirt with developing military technology has caused so much strife from within. Thousands of employees are expressing outrage at the fact that they are being made to work with the U.S. military in developing war technology. According to Google, however, they’ll be keeping ethical principles in mind as they do so.

According to The New York Times, Google is trying to come up with a set of guidelines that will enable them to work on the development of military technology while also reassuring people that it isn’t about to become part of the military-industrial complex. Among the points that the company wants to drive home is the ban on developing AI technology that could be used as a weapon.

The publication was also able to obtain internal emails which suggest that Google was perfectly aware of the outcry that the news would bring. As such, Fei-Fei Li, the chief scientist at Google Cloud had suggested avoiding mentioning weaponized AI at any cost once it made its announcement of the project.

“Weaponized AI is probably one of the most sensitized topics of AI — if not THE most. This is red meat to the media to find all ways to damage Google,” Li wrote.

Unfortunately for Google, it has never made such an announcement, The Verge reports. The news was broken before it could say anything about the matter. So now, Google is busy putting out fires and dealing with the backlash that it is getting, both from outsiders and from its own employees.

Despite its reassurances that the technology it was developing was for “non-offensive use,” few felt that they were able to trust in Google. A huge part of this is because developing military technology, regardless of the intentions, has a tendency to taint a company’s reputation.