Protest | Google signs AI deal with Pentagon despite vocal employee opposition

Politics continues to leak into the US workplace with hundreds of Google employees sending a letter to the company’s CEO demanding that he not sign a deal with the Pentagon to use Google’s artificial intelligence for classified work.

It comes two months after rival AI company Anthropic was dropped by the Defense Department for requesting a similar restriction.

The letter was signed by more than 600 Google employees, many from its elite DeepMind AI lab, according to The Washington Post. It asked the company’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, not to enter into any agreement with the Defense Department that allowed for uses of the company’s AI that are classified. The letter argued that such work would prevent Google representatives from knowing how the company’s technology was used.

“We want to see AI benefit humanity; not to see it being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways. This includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance but extends beyond,” the workers wrote in the letter.