Google decides to no longer be involved in Project Maven

Google decided not to renew its contract with the US Department of Defense in Project Maven. For information, Project Maven is a project that requires Google to provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze video footage from drones.

Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced this decision in an internal meeting with employees on Friday. The current contract will expire in 2019 and will not be updated.

Greene revealed that the decision not to renew this contract was due to the controversy that attacked Google. Greene also added that Google accepted this contract initially because at that time Google was aggressively looking for a military project.

 

Realizing his fatal mistake for using AI for unethical purposes, Google will then announce its ethical principles in the use of AI next week.

Google's participation in the project sparked criticism from employees and academics. It is feared that AI technology provided by Google will be used for unethical and even unethical purposes.

As a form of protest, thousands of Google employees have signed a petition demanding Google to withdraw from Project Maven. In early May, thousands of Google employees resigned as well as protest.

 

Google's top executives themselves are very defensive in defending Google's participation in Project Maven. According to them the contract value between Google and Dephan is relatively small and Google only provides open-source software.