Artificial Intelligence researchers are against AI use in the military
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What is Project Maven and why did Google employees protest it?
It's time for our daily tech and business report. Today, we are joined by Bloomberg's Katrina Manson. She wrote the book Project Maven: a Marine Colonel, his team in the dawn of AI Warfare, which tells the history of this story. Hundreds of Google's AI researchers have signed a letter addressed to CEO Stinder Pesci asking that the company's AI not be used for classified military projects. After employees protested in twenty eighteen, Google declined to renew its contract with the military. and introduced a set of AI principles, but the company has since walked some of those back, and it has strengthened its ties with the military. So Katrina, what is Project Maven, first of all?
Oh, Project Maven was the Pentagon's effort back in 2017 to use AI on uh computer vision, computer vision algorithms to detect objects on drone uh video footage.
How did Google’s AI principles change after the 2018 protest?
That Google did not, many uh thousands of Google workers did not want uh their AI to go to part of this project. They protested when they found out they were involved in it. Uh uh without their knowledge in 2018. And their protest was so significant that they were able to convince their company not to renew the contract to bring AI to Project Maven and also to introduce new AI principles that would guide not working on harmful uh uses such as weapons. But over the years, Google has watered down those AI red lines And in fact, today Google's Gemini, the chat bot, is back at the Pentagon. Even its agents, Gemini agents, are back at the Pentagon. And last month the undersecretary there at the Pentagon, Emile Michael, told me that he wants to put um Google Gemini onto classified and top secret as well.
Why are Google’s researchers signing a new letter to stop AI use in classified military projects?
And the employees uh are saying, Wait a minute, we thought we were done with this. They are they are fighting back. What exactly are they doing to try and get Google to go back to its earlier commitments?
As I understand it, this has been going on for months. Um in twenty twenty three, DeepMind, few which was owned by Google, fused more institutionally with Google and became Google Deep Mind. Now, DeepMind is at the cutting edge of AI research, and many of the people who work there, it's based in the UK, are fully dedicated to using AI for uh social, medical Scientific improvement and have absolutely no interest in working with the Pentagon. Now, what they are beginning to argue is that whether or not their particular part of Google works with the Pentagon is immaterial to them. They are working under Google and they don't want to see their AI or any of Google's AI used on Pentagon systems that could create harm, particularly when
What are the concerns about AI‑driven autonomous weapons and mass surveillance?
It comes to the prospect of two things: autonomous weapon systems and mass surveillance, both two things that the Pentagon would push back on and say, we're not there yet, and we have no intention of doing domestic mass surveillance. But the concern that AI is such a powerful tool coming from these AI researchers at DeepMind and other parts of Google, and that not only is it a powerful tool, but Google will not be able to tell what it's doing once it's being used on classified defence uh networks uh at the agentic level is really fuelling this latest protest letter to the CEO.
This of course uh recalls the dust up of a month or so ago between the White House, the Pentagon, and Anthropic. And it seems like this is happening again and again in Silicon Valley. Where do you see this going?
Well, the Anthropic case is one of the reasons we've got to this stage. Uh the Pentagon declared anthropic a supply chain risk because it wasn't prepared to compromise on what its leadership described as two red lines uh fully autonomous weapon systems, uh putting LLMs into those and uh using LLMs for uh uh domestic surveillance. Now
How are other AI firms like Anthropic, OpenAI, and XAI navigating Pentagon partnerships?
The Pentagon says it's not workable for a company to set red lines like that and has declared it a supply chain risk. That is going through the courts. It's being contested very heavily by Anthropic, but at the same time, the Pentagon is trying to find more willing partners. It's already struck a deal with XAI to go onto classified cloud.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is Project Maven and why did Google employees protest it?
0:00–0:57
2
How did Google’s AI principles change after the 2018 protest?
0:57–1:56
3
Why are Google’s researchers signing a new letter to stop AI use in classified military projects?
1:56–2:58
4
What are the concerns about AI‑driven autonomous weapons and mass surveillance?
2:58–4:12
5
How are other AI firms like Anthropic, OpenAI, and XAI navigating Pentagon partnerships?
4:12–4:59
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from KCBS Bloomberg Tech and Business Report
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