Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Military Drone AI Work To Grow Exponentially

In March, Google secretly signed an agreement with the Pentagon to provide cutting edge AI technology for drone warfare, causing about a dozen Google employees to resign in protest and thousands to sign a petition calling for an end to the contract. Google has since tried to quash the dissent, claiming that the contract was "only" for $9 million, according to the New York Times. Internal company emails obtained by The Intercept tell a different story: The September emails show that Google's business development arm expected the military drone artificial intelligence revenue to ramp up from an initial $15 million to an eventual $250 million per year. In fact, one month after news of the contract broke, the Pentagon allocated an additional $100 million to Project Maven [the endeavor designed to help drone operators recognize images captured on the battlefield]. The internal Google email chain also notes that several big tech players competed to win the Project Maven contract. Other tech firms such as Amazon were in the running, one Google executive involved in negotiations wrote. (Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.) Rather than serving solely as a minor experiment for the military, Google executives on the thread stated that Project Maven was "directly related" to a major cloud computing contract worth billions of dollars that other Silicon Valley firms are competing to win. The emails further note that Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing arm of Amazon, "has some work loads" related to Project Maven.

Re:But Don't Worry

[gnick]

Is all military work unethical? There's a lot of it and it employs a bunch of people.

Re:But Don't Worry

[Lunix Nutcase]

Have you ever worked for the DoD as a contractor? I have and this nonsense about Google only doing work for the DoD that is “ethical” is laughable. The military-industrial conplex is about the least ethical group of people you can find.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever worked for the DoD as a contractor? I have and this nonsense about Google only doing work for the DoD that is “ethical” is laughable. The military-industrial conplex is about the least ethical group of people you can find.

Ummm, less ethical than Google?

I find that hard to believe. At least the DoD is honest about what they do: kill the enemies of the US.

Google's entire business model is based on lying to their product while they strip-mine their privacy.

Re:But Don't Worry

[Lunix Nutcase]

Ummm, less ethical than Google?

Yes, but that isn’t some endorsement to say that Google is a beacon of ethics. Far from it.

I find that hard to believe. At least the DoD is honest about what they do: kill the enemies of the US.

Honesty is not the same as being ethical. If a person is honest that they beat up young children to steal their candy does that make them ethical?

Google's entire business model is based on lying to their product while they strip-mine their privacy.

Because the DoD has never lied or done things that have invaded the privacy of US citizens? LOL. Methinks you need to brush up on PRISM, NSLs, etc.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

>If a person is honest that they beat up young children to steal their candy does that make them ethical?

Obviously it does when compared to the bully who lies about his beating kids for their candy.

Put another way, is the criminal who confesses his crime to the police more ethical than the criminal (same crime) who doesn't? I'd say yes.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[sheph]

That's just what I was thinking. If the IRS can target conservatives with the blessing of the opposing administration what about anything else. How long before we start having efforts to wipe out all opposition domestically? Certain religious groups? People with mental illness? The US government does not exactly have a long history of benevolence.

Re:But Don't Worry

[gnick]

Have you ever worked for the DoD as a contractor?

Ex-DoE contractor, centered around weapons. I did some analysis of explosive material for reliability concerns, did a lot of work on defeating improvised nukes, and did some work on a large-bore aircraft gun. I feel better about the work I do now, but I don't feel like my DoE work was unethical. The explosive in question could one day be used to detonate a nuke and kill a bunch of people; the aircraft gun could claim victims. I bear non-zero responsibility for those deaths. Making the call on whether a killing is ethical or not is out of my hands, but I accepted that. If you want to damn me, you also have to damn the people pulling the trigger, the people ordering those people around, and the tax-payers that aren't doing everything in their power to stop it.

Re:

[LordWabbit2]

If you're called before your maker when you die

I would tell him he is a cunt and go to hell anyway, that's where all the decent musicians went. The last thing I want to do is listen to fucken gospel music for the rest of eternity. I would rather roast in hell listening to some decent music. I would also suggest you widen your horizons and go read some Greek mythology, but that won't help if you haven't read the bible from cover to cover. You have done that, haven't you? I can count on one hand the amo

Re:

[LordWabbit2]

or you could take it figuratively as a metaphor for answering to your own conscience

That's retarded - so somehow after my body stops ticking over I am going to have an internal dialogue in which I get to argue with myself? If anything is immature it's your response. Did my comment annoy the good little christian? Go thump a bible.

Re:

[gnick]

If you're called before your maker when you die to be held accountable for the choices you made in your life, playing the "but whattabout" game isn't going to help you.

I'm literally more concerned about the location of my towel than I am about answering to my maker. And I'm pretty certain that I know where my towel is.

Not really trying to shift blame. Trying to do an honest accounting of how many deaths I'm responsible for. If the aircraft gun kills one person, it's easy to blame the pilot. Or to blame the guy that ordered the pilot to fire. The blame attributed to one of the guys who helped design one of the maintenance components would be pretty minimal, but I acknowled

Re:

[sheph]

If I make a hammer how much responsibility do I bear if someone uses it to kill someone? I'd say about as much as if I make cars and someone kills someone with that. Or guns for that matter while we're on the subject. Making tools does not make you responsible for how those tools are used. Even nukes which are designed primarily to kill are also used to ensure peace through their disuse. Bad things would happen if we didn't have them making the fact that we have them a positive. If I were that I guy

Re:

[rainer_d]

It's (basically) the same question that got asked in the Nuremberg Trials: just how much responsibility does any given individual have? Where does it start, where does it end?

I think I remember a semi-recent trial about a book-keeper who worked in a concentration camp. He certainly didn't kill anybody personally. But he worked there. He calculated how much gold could be yielded from the teeth of the inmates and all the other gritty stuff. Somebody had to do it after all, right?

At the Nuremberg Trials almost

Re:

[micahraleigh]

It spends unethical volumes of tax payer dollars without anything in return. That's about as unethical as it gets.

Or perhaps you are suggesting we have a responsibility to let invaders waltz into our country so they can be greeted with wine and caviar.

Re:

[gnick]

murder as in: kill against their will

murder: [merriam-webster.com]

the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought

You could make an argument that there's some universal law against killing, so it's all murder. Or you could argue that not even stoning adulterers is murder, since it follows the law. Either way, it doesn't mean what you said it means.

Re:

[sheph]

I would strongly disagree with that sentiment. We have a right to defend our interests, and that's not always just our borders. When you have training camps where jihadists are being trained to kill American citizens it is in our best interests to put a stop to that. When you have brutal dictators who are using chemical weapons on their political opponents in violation of the Geneva conventions it's in the interests of the world at large to put a stop to that as well. There are degrees. By your logic i

Re: But Don't Worry

[Arunex]

how do you defend the border when your high tech weapons are sticks and stones while the enemy comes at you with nukes and tanks? there goes your opinion

Re:But Don't Worry

[Rei]

If you define "the military objectives of my side are good, and those of their side are evil", then you can justify almost anything that helps you win.

Clearly, using algorithms to pre-sort images, while useful in its own right, is just the start. The obvious followup is having drones designed such that if they're jammed, they can still attempt to carry out their mission as best as they can on their own (thus reducing or eliminating the military effectiveness of jamming as an anti-drone weapon; Russia has gotten very good at such electronic warfare).

Re:

[Wrath0fb0b]

If you define "the military objectives of my side are good, and those of their side are evil", then you can justify almost anything that helps you win.

I don't even remotely believe that. I believe that the US has had positive military objectives (Kosovo) and very negative ones (Vietnam). And beyond the objectives, sometimes the means were better and sometimes worse, especially in places like Vietnam.

But one thing I very strongly believe is that the choices about those military objectives and means needs to

Re:

[olsmeister]

Maybe, but the real clue was when it was replaced with "Killing is my business, and business is good."

Partnership

[ranton]

They should just be doing this work under a "partnership" with a heavily funded startup.

But..but... muh ethics!!

[Lunix Nutcase]

But trust Google because they’re going to be “ethical.” Why do people still believe a single word Google says? They’re a two-faced corporation just like the rest of them.

Re:

[Lunix Nutcase]

And yet reading posts to this story shows that some people still think Google is some magical different type of corporation.

Re:sf

[Lunix Nutcase]

Do you hear people complaining about other US corps involved with the US military?

Yes, I have. Ever heard of this thing called the “military-industrial complex?” People have been complaining about it for going on 60 years.

Re:

[Lunix Nutcase]

And how is what is happening here any different? Is Google being fined, executives being improsoned or anything of that sort? Oh wait, no all that is happening is a couple of news stories criticizing their dishonesty.

Weak trollig is weak. .

Re:

[AHuxley]

To understand the mind set passed down understand the end of ww2.
Operation Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] later the Defense Scientists Immigration Program.
A lot of US science has its original well outside the USA over generations.
The story is generations know how to sell the US gov on needing their skills.

Re:

[kilfarsnar]

I don't get the US.

Outside of silicon valley, as a generalization? *No one cares*.

Do you hear people complaining about other US corps involved with the US military? What about US tech firms like IBM, Oracle, Sun(history here), Microsoft, and EVERYONE ELSE!

Yet, Google gets involved -- Google which I hate I might had, but to be fair.. they get involved and BLAH BLAH BLAH.

There's no story here. At all. If this is a story, then setup some website that shows all companies in the US, and all their funding, and start bitching at the top!

It's a fair point. But I think it's because people expect Google to be better than that. They started out trying to not be "evil", which shows an understanding that power can corrupt and that corporations can often act sociopathically. They seem to be going against that now. I expect Raytheon to be in the death business; I would like it if Google did better.

Re:

[kilfarsnar]

Raytheon is in the keep your kids from getting killed by the enemy business. You can support them or not, but it's their tech that will be relied on when someone tries to save your kids. Up to us how good that tech is. Apparently you don't give a shit and would rather an enemy be in a superior position.

Would you say the same to a Pakistani mother? I'm guessing not. Funny how good things and bad things can change position, depending on one's point of view.

Someone think

[AHuxley]

of the contractors.

Every drone in use is another work shift. AI coders enjoying gainful employment.

Think of the positive peace side of cloud computing AI code that enjoys guiding drones.
A drone painted by a local artist that maps a famers fields.
In agriculture, archaeology, city planning, normal police work, geology.

An AI can work on so much more than just images of a well disciplined enemy in a free fire zone.
Think of the later spin off and peace dividend of having an AI thats so very advanced after all that free practice.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're referring to is dual-use technology that is typically hit with embargos and forbidden/restricted export.

But make no mistake, the primary goal is military, it just happens to also be useful in a civilian context to help pay for it.

Re:

[AHuxley]

The civilian context is so much more easy to present if Uncle Sam did all the hard work.
The don't ask don't tell origin story of so many trusted US brands.

Re:

[khandom08]

Think of HK-Drones. I for one can't wait!

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Every drone in use is another work shift. AI coders enjoying gainful employment.

That's only slightly true now, and it will become less true as the drones become more capable. Then one size fits all and you don't need customization. Also, this requirement for human operators is temporary. Sooner or later they're going to make it legal to operate drones in some contexts completely autonomously. For example, right now you need a licensed drone pilot to do a commercial survey of a wind turbine. (Until they introduced commercial drone pilot licensing, that person had to be an actual pilot.)

Re:

[phantomfive]

To extend your comment......

Think of the children. Peaceful robots doing daycare. In fields of flowers on sunny days. Blue skies. Won't you think of the children?

Re:

[Lunix Nutcase]

Awww poor snowflake. Do you need a safe space to cry in?

Re:

[Lunix Nutcase]

What specific military secrets have been spilled?

Re:

[khandom08]

Do you need a safe space to cry in?

You sure you have enough room in your mom's basement?

How the CIA made Google

[Anonymous Coward]

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e

INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.

Re:

[sheph]

...and at the end of the day who cares? Weapons of war don't do anything without politicians who decide when and where they get used. It's like blaming guns and the NRA for school shootings instead of the individual who pulled the trigger.

Be evil to make more money

[kbg]

I knew long ago when their motto was "Don't be evil" that it was only a question of time until it changed to "Be evil to make more money" because all capitalist companies evolve into doing evil things because evil things are more profitable.

I will sell my target recognition system to DOD

[SysEngineer]

I have create a target recognition system using opencv and caffe. I working now on getting it to run on a RasPi by simplifying the neural net. I used blue uniforms for this first test target category..