Google drafting ethical guidelines to guide use of tech after employees protest defence project

Google is reportedly drafting new ethical standards to guide the company's use of technology and products. The move comes after the tech giant faced employee fury over a US Defence Department project, IANS reported.

Over 3,000 employees from Google wrote to company CEO Sundar Pichai demanding that the company scrap the Defence Department project for analysing drone footage using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques as they feared that the technology could plausibly help target people for death, Fortune.com reported.

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. 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,” the letter, obtained by The New York Times, read.

Citing a Defense One article, the report said that Google Cloud chief Diane Greene this week hosted a Town Hall at which she assured employees of new ethical standards for the company.

The programme, which is called Maven, applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to the job of classifying objects in surveillance footage, but Google responded to the employee petition saying that the technology was intended to save lives and save people from having to do highly tedious work.

However, Greene promised employees that Google would not sign up for any further work on 'Maven' or similar projects without having new ethical principles in place, according to Defense One's sources.

Project Maven is not Google’s first military project. When the company bought Boston Dynamics in 2013, the deal raised eyebrows as the robotics firm had contracts with the Pentagon—and had indeed been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It later sold the company to SoftBank.