Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage—employees “outraged”

[Swordsmyth]

The project is called "Project Maven," also known as the "Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (http://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Project%20Maven%20DSD%20Memo%2020170425.pdf) (AWCFT)." The project started in April of last year with a mission to “accelerate DoD’s integration of big data and machine learning.”
A DoD press release on Project Maven (https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1254719/project-maven-to-deploy-computer-algorithms-to-war-zone-by-years-end/) says the project aims to help deal with the "millions of hours of video" the military collects. Drone footage is pouring into the Pentagon at a rate faster than human analysts can keep up with, so the hope is that machine learning could help do some of the heavy lifting and identify interesting footage. As the owner of YouTube, Google is probably the world's foremost expert on having more video footage than you know what to do with.

According to the Gizmodo report, some Google employees are not taking the news well: "Some Google employees were outraged that the company would offer resources to the military for surveillance technology involved in drone operations... while others argued that the project raised important ethical questions about the development and use of machine learning."

More at: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-helping-the-pentagon-sift-through-millions-of-hours-of-drone-footage/

[timosman]

Shut up and code.:cool:

[shakey1]

Just another tentacle of the MIC.

[AZJoe]

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fyournewswire.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F03%2FGoogle-ai-drones-pentagon.jpg&f=1

[AZJoe]

Google Admits Complicity in Drone Assassinations (https://russia-insider.com/en/google-admits-working-pentagons-drone-murder-program/ri22738)

Google’s parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets used in the illegal US government drone murder program. ...

the United States claims to have killed close to 3,000 “combatants” in drone strikes. Internal military documents show that for every one person targeted by a drone strike, nine bystanders are killed ...

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “A program of targeted killing far from any battlefield, without charge or trial, violates the constitutional guarantee of due process. It also violates international law ...

Google’s complicity with the drone murder program implicates the company in the criminal activities of the US military ... Sensitive to both the potential legal ramifications ... Google stressed in a statement that its collaboration “is for non-offensive uses only,” ... this absurd and unserious pretense ... is the equivalent of a Mafia getaway driver claiming he is not an accomplice to murder because he did not pull the trigger.

The US government has claimed the right to use drones to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world, including within the borders of the United States. In 2011, the Obama administration assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?319691-Awlaki-Killing-Does-America-Need-Courts-Juries-or-Trials-Any-More&highlight=awlaki), with a Predator drone strike in Yemen, then murdered his 16-year-old son (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?324410-Obama-Has-Awlaki-s-16-Yr-Old-Son-Killed-at-Dinner&highlight=awlaki), Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, [the son Obama never had (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?421799-Abdulrahman-al-Awlaki-The-Son-Barack-Obama-Never-Had&highlight=awlaki)] in another drone strike two weeks later. ...


The Defense Department spent at least $7.4 billion on artificial intelligence programs last year, and is expected to spend even more this year, with much of that amount flowing to corporations like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Nvidia ... Google, Facebook and Twitter have all announced measures to censor the information their services present to users, promoting “authoritative” and “trusted” news outlets over “alternative” viewpoints, which include news outlets that expose and denounce US war crimes. ... As these companies ... impose increasingly restrictive censorship measures, lucrative defense contracts are a means to pad their bottom line and align their financial interests ever more closely with the war-making and repressive operations of the American state.

The technology giants have moved to impose censorship measures at the same time that the Pentagon has concluded that it has found itself in ... massive logistical burden of the countless wars, overseas deployments, and destabilization operations ... US military planners have come to the conclusion that the only way to retain the American military advantage ... is to integrate Silicon Valley into the warfighting machine. ... by focusing on “autonomous learning systems, human-machine collaborative decision-making, assisted human operations, advanced manned-unmanned systems operations,” and “networked autonomous weapons” ...

Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, ... “Many of you will have noted that Eric Schmidt is calling Google an AI company now, not a data company.” ... In order to streamline the reciprocal exchange between the technology giants’ vast computational power, artificial intelligence capabilities, and massive database of sensitive user data and the US military’s virtually limitless budget ... Google’s parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets ...

[CCTelander]

Google Admits Complicity in Drone Assassinations (http://Google’s parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets used in the illegal US government drone murder program. ...the United States claims to have killed close to 3,000 “combatants” in drone strikes. Internal military documents show that for every one person targeted by a drone strike, nine bystanders are killed ...According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “A program of targeted killing far from any battlefield, without charge or trial, violates the constitutional guarantee of due process. It also violates international law ...Google’s complicity with the drone murder program implicates the company in the criminal activities of the US military ... Sensitive to both the potential legal ramifications ... Google stressed in a statement that its collaboration “is for non-offensive uses only,” ... this absurd and unserious pretense ... is the equivalent of a Mafia getaway driver claiming he is not an accomplice to murder because he did not pull the trigger.The US government has claimed the right to use drones to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world, including within the borders of the United States. In 2011, the Obama administration assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, with a Predator drone strike in Yemen, then murdered his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, in another drone strike two weeks later. ... The Defense Department spent at least $7.4 billion on artificial intelligence programs last year, and is expected to spend even more this year, with much of that amount flowing to corporations like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Nvidia ... Google, Facebook and Twitter have all announced measures to censor the information their services present to users, promoting “authoritative” and “trusted” news outlets over “alternative” viewpoints, which include news outlets that expose and denounce US war crimes. ... As these companies ... impose increasingly restrictive censorship measures, lucrative defense contracts are a means to pad their bottom line and align their financial interests ever more closely with the war-making and repressive operations of the American state.The technology giants have moved to impose censorship measures at the same time that the Pentagon has concluded that it has found itself in ... massive logistical burden of the countless wars, overseas deployments, and destabilization operations ... US military planners have come to the conclusion that the only way to retain the American military advantage ... is to integrate Silicon Valley into the warfighting machine. ... by focusing on “autonomous learning systems, human-machine collaborative decision-making, assisted human operations, advanced manned-unmanned systems operations,” and “networked autonomous weapons” ...Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, ... “Many of you will have noted that Eric Schmidt is calling Google an AI company now, not a data company.” ... In order to streamline the reciprocal exchange between the technology giants’ vast computational power, artificial intelligence capabilities, and massive database of sensitive user data and the US military’s virtually limitless budget ... Google’s parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets ...)

Google’s parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets used in the illegal US government drone murder program. ...

the United States claims to have killed close to 3,000 “combatants” in drone strikes. Internal military documents show that for every one person targeted by a drone strike, nine bystanders are killed ...

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “A program of targeted killing far from any battlefield, without charge or trial, violates the constitutional guarantee of due process. It also violates international law ...

Google’s complicity with the drone murder program implicates the company in the criminal activities of the US military ... Sensitive to both the potential legal ramifications ... Google stressed in a statement that its collaboration “is for non-offensive uses only,” ... this absurd and unserious pretense ... is the equivalent of a Mafia getaway driver claiming he is not an accomplice to murder because he did not pull the trigger.

The US government has claimed the right to use drones to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world, including within the borders of the United States. In 2011, the Obama administration assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, with a Predator drone strike in Yemen, then murdered his 16-year-old son (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?324410-Obama-Has-Awlaki-s-16-Yr-Old-Son-Killed-at-Dinner&highlight=awlaki), Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, [the son Obama never had (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?421799-Abdulrahman-al-Awlaki-The-Son-Barack-Obama-Never-Had&highlight=awlaki)] in another drone strike two weeks later. ...


The Defense Department spent at least $7.4 billion on artificial intelligence programs last year, and is expected to spend even more this year, with much of that amount flowing to corporations like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Nvidia ... Google, Facebook and Twitter have all announced measures to censor the information their services present to users, promoting “authoritative” and “trusted” news outlets over “alternative” viewpoints, which include news outlets that expose and denounce US war crimes. ... As these companies ... impose increasingly restrictive censorship measures, lucrative defense contracts are a means to pad their bottom line and align their financial interests ever more closely with the war-making and repressive operations of the American state.

The technology giants have moved to impose censorship measures at the same time that the Pentagon has concluded that it has found itself in ... massive logistical burden of the countless wars, overseas deployments, and destabilization operations ... US military planners have come to the conclusion that the only way to retain the American military advantage ... is to integrate Silicon Valley into the warfighting machine. ... by focusing on “autonomous learning systems, human-machine collaborative decision-making, assisted human operations, advanced manned-unmanned systems operations,” and “networked autonomous weapons” ...

Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, ... “Many of you will have noted that Eric Schmidt is calling Google an AI company now, not a data company.” ... In order to streamline the reciprocal exchange between the technology giants’ vast computational power, artificial intelligence capabilities, and massive database of sensitive user data and the US military’s virtually limitless budget ... Google’s parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets ...


Link doesn't work.

[timosman]

Link doesn't work.

https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=Google%27s%20parent%20company%20Alphabet%20 has%20confirmed%20that%20it%20has%20provided%20sof tware%20to%20identify%20targets%20used%20in%20the% 20illegal%20US%20government%20drone%20murder%20pro gram

[Swordsmyth]

The controversial government contract that led thousands of Google employees to sign a petition (https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/04/google-employees-petition-ceo-to-drop-out-of-pentagon-ai-project/) in opposition and dozens to quit (https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/14/google-project-maven-employee-protest/) in protest will not be renewed, Gizmodo (https://gizmodo.com/google-plans-not-to-renew-its-contract-for-project-mave-1826488620?rev=1527878336532&utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow) reports. Project Maven (https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/15/the-pentagon-is-hunting-isis-using-big-data-and-machine-learning/) has been billed by Google as a small, "non-offensive" deal through which it would provide open-source AI software to the Pentagon that could help the military flag drone images requiring further human review. But the project has been decried by many of the company's employees who believe it could hurt efforts to hold the public's trust and went against Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto.
According to three individuals who attended a weekly Google meeting this morning, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced that the Project Maven contract would not be renewed when it expires next year. She said the backlash over the deal had been bad for the company and that the contract was pursued during a time when the company was actively seeking military work.

More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-reportedly-won-t-renew-193300990.html