The partnership with the Pentagon will be abandoned by Google in 2019. The controversy internally was too strong.
This is the continuation - and the end - of the controversy that has mobilized thousands of Google employees. Since the announcement of the contract with the American Pentagon, the Maven project has created controversy. For the Californian giant, it's time to leave it out. To find the "Do not do evil" of his beginnings?
Google has announced that it wants to recover its founding ethical principles. Concretely, this amounts to better frame the various projects related to artificial intelligence, especially those related to military applications. A day after this announcement, the abandonment of the collaboration with the Pentagon is announced, for 2019. As a reminder, the Maven project was a partnership dedicated to the development of various technologies, including a formidable AI image recognition by drone.
To make this turnaround, a petition was sent to the Google CEO, and a dozen employees resigned not to be associated with these tools used by the US military. Google began by emphasizing the "non-offensive" nature of its technologies, without convincing internally. Now, it's official, the Director of Google Cloud has announced the end of the partnership for 2019. The drone war will not go through Google.