Google Deepmind Employees Resign in Protest over AI Deal with Trump’s Pentagon
Several Google DeepMind employees have quit in recent weeks because of a contract the company signed with the Pentagon earlier this year. The contract allows Google's AI technology to be used in secret military settings.
BBC News reports that Sofia Liguori, a research engineer based in London, left Google DeepMind this week after working there for three years. She spoke to the BBC in her personal capacity, even though her contract limits her ability to do so. She said: “Realizing my company is pushing more and more for AI systems in military operations makes me feel ashamed to work at Google.”
Liguori said she no longer trusts the company to follow its own ethical standards. “I don’t agree with this direction and this has led me to lose faith in my company being true to its stated ethical values,” she said. She also said the terms of her departure leave her with little freedom to speak out in the future: “In principle I’m not allowed to criticize Google for the duration of my life.”
She is not the only employee to leave. Andreas Kirsch, an AI researcher, resigned from Google DeepMind earlier this month for similar reasons. He told the BBC that “Google’s governance and oversight are not sufficient or meaningful enough to deploy AI safely and responsibly in military and classified settings.” Kirsch said he wants “to develop artificial superintelligence safely in the future.” He also questioned how much control Google keeps over its technology once it reaches the battlefield. “Google seems to have no right to control or veto how the Pentagon uses its AI and also seems to have limited visibility into how it’s being deployed,” he said.
The resignations came after Google signed a contract earlier this year with the US military to use AI in secret military settings. OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Oracle, Nvidia and the startup Reflection have signed similar agreements. These deals are part of a wider effort by the Pentagon to use AI more quickly. In January, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States “will become an ‘AI-first’ warfighting force.” Emil Michael, an under secretary in the Department of Defense, said in a statement this year that “speed defines victory in the AI era.”
This push to move quickly has raised concerns. Jack Shanahan, a retired lieutenant general and former director of Project Maven, said the Pentagon's approach aims to “go as fast as possible to deploy [AI technology] as widely as possible, potentially at the expense of the rigor and discipline of test and evaluation.” Maven Smart Systems is the Pentagon's main software platform for organizing intelligence and data. Defense company Palantir developed it, and it uses AI to help military personnel identify and choose targets to attack. Palantir has added technology from several major AI companies to the Maven system.
According to the contract, Google's AI can be used for “any lawful government purpose.” However, the document also says the technology “should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons (including target selection) without appropriate human oversight and control.”
Breitbart News previously reported that a well-known Google AI researcher had resigned because he was “incredibly ashamed” that his employer was working with the Pentagon:
Andreas Kirsch, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind, strongly criticized the company's latest agreement with the Pentagon in a post on X on Tuesday. “I’m speechless at Google signing a deal to use our AI models for classified tasks. Frankly, it is shameful,” he wrote.
The agreement went ahead despite strong opposition inside the company. More than 600 Google employees had sent a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai, asking him to stop the Pentagon from using Google's AI in secret military operations.
Kirsch told Business Insider, “When I went to bed yesterday, I was hopeful that the employee letter would have an effect and give us pause to consider,” he said in a text message. “This morning I woke up to a worst-case version of the contract being signed by Google in the meantime.”
Google's employees, whom the article describes as far-left, do not want to support America or its national defense, according to Breitbart News. Wynton Hall, Breitbart News's social media director, wrote the New York Times bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI. The book aims to provide a definitive guide to how the MAGA movement can develop AI policies that benefit humanity without giving control of the country to left-wing groups in Silicon Valley or allowing China to take over the world.
Read more in BBC News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News who covers AI, free speech, and online censorship.