The Google employees have lately discovered that the most popular multinational technology company will withdraw from a contract to assist the military in making use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to examine drone videos, followed with a disapproval by the workers.
On Friday, An executive from Google’s cloud team proclaimed and told the employees that the company would not attempt or desire to renew the disputable deal after it expires next year. When the company came across the fact that the military was associated with the US Department of Defence, it thrived the feeling of rebellion inside the internet titan.
An internally drawn request or petition appealing for the authority of Google to remain away from the “business of war” gathered end number of signatures, however, some workers depart from protesting against the collaboration with the military. According to the copies posted online, the employee petition read,“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war.”
The internet giant Google has remained tight-lipped about ‘Project Maven’ which apparently makes utilization of engineering talent and machine learning to differentiate people and objects in drone videos for the Defense Department. “Therefore, we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
An internet rights group named Electronic Frontier Foundation and the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) have highly supported given assistance in regard to this petition.
In an open letter, ICRAC said,”As military commanders come to see the object recognition algorithms as reliable, it will be tempting to attenuate or even remove human review and oversight for these systems.”
On the other hand, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others emphasized on the requirement for a moral and ethical substructure in the use of artificial intelligence in the military for the defence system.
“The use of AI in weapons systems is a crucially important topic and one that deserves an international public discussion and likely some international agreements to ensure global safety,” the EFF said in a blog post.
Google further has declaredly stated its business to improve the ability of machines and mechanism to recognize objects is not for objectionable purposes. The contract was declared to be worth less than $10 million to Google, but was likely to have the capacity to grow and lead to more remunerative and successful technology partnerships with the military. But now that Google has decided to discontinue the partnership, this doesn’t seem possible.