Don't Be Evil: Google Drops Pentagon's A.I Contract, Create Censored Search Engine For China

[oldshadow]

They weren't doing it. They were talking about doing it. It is exactly the same. They dont have the ability to do the job up to standard because of employee problems, so the bid is withdrawn. That is bad to you. Why?

They are a private company they can drop out of the bid if they want.

But because it looks like they and their employees believe the US military is "evil" I see no reason to trust them with any work for the military.

Why have someone doing work for you when you can not trust them.

 

[Ruprecht]

They are a private company they can drop out of the bid if they want.

But because it looks like they and their employees believe the US military is "evil" I see no reason to trust them with any work for the military.

Why have someone doing work for you when you can not trust them.

Ex Google CEO and current board member Eric Schmidt is still on the US Department of Defense's "Defense Innovation board". A lot of the leading talent in AI simply don't want to be developing weapons, and are in outright opposition to the development of autonomous killing machines. That's a relatively small department within Google though, and the company still intends to work with the military in other areas.
It's not restricted to the US either. The political campaign against autonomous weapons started in the UK, and there was a boycott this year of a South Korean university that was involved in a similar development program.

 

[oldshadow]

Ex Google CEO and current board member Eric Schmidt is still on the US Department of Defense's "Defense Innovation board". A lot of the leading talent in AI simply don't want to be developing weapons and are in outright opposition to the development of autonomous killing machines. That's a relatively small department within Google though, and the company still intends to work with the military in other areas.
It's not restricted to the US either. The political campaign against autonomous weapons started in the UK and there was a boycott this year of a South Korean university that was involved in a similar development program.

And do you think China or Russia is not going to get ahead of us on this?

 

[Ruprecht]

And do you think China or Russia is not going to get ahead of us on this?

It's no surprise that a lot of developers don't want to be drawn into the MIC. Deepmind in particular.
I think the development is inevitable though, and a restrictive treaty is never going to happen without some demonstrative atrocity. You can't develop technology like AI and not expect it to have military applications. Not all the objectors are calling for blanket bans though, they just want to make sure humans are still in the loop on any decisions for the use of lethal force.

 

[PEB]

Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition
By Naomi Nix October 8, 2018

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has decided not to compete for the Pentagon’s cloud-computing contract valued at as much as $10 billion, saying the project may conflict with its corporate values.

The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Companies are due to submit bids for the contract, which could last as long as 10 years, on Oct. 12th.

Google’s announcement on Monday came just months after the company decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue.

“We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.”

The spokesman added that Google is “working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways.”

The Tech Workers Coalition, which advocates for giving employees a say in technology company decisions, said in a statement that Google’s decision to withdraw from the cloud competition stemmed from “sustained” pressure from tech workers who “have significant power, and are increasingly willing to use it.”

Google is behind other technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in obtaining government cloud-security authorizations that depend on the sensitivity of data a service is hosting.

The JEDI contract attracted widespread interest from technology companies struggling to catch up with Amazon in the burgeoning federal government market for cloud services. Final requirements for the project were released in July after a months-long lobbying campaign in Washington by tech companies including Microsoft, International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp. that opposed the Pentagon’s plans to choose just one winner for the project instead of splitting the contract among a number of providers.

“Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it,” the Google spokesman said. “Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload.”

In a report to Congress, the Defense Department said making multiple awards under current acquisition law would be a slow process that “could prevent DoD from rapidly delivering new capabilities and improved effectiveness to the warfighter that enterprise-level cloud computing can enable.”

The department also said it expects “to maintain contracts with numerous cloud providers to access specialized capabilities not available under the JEDI Cloud contract.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ut-of-pentagon-s-10-billion-cloud-competition

They did not do this because of higher values an their employees best interests. No it''s because AWS wipes the floor over them. They did not want to be in Washington to hear AWS won the contract.

Trust me these companies are still very active working with the Pentagon wonks. They just know that AWS is going to win the cloud contract. AWS has a huge lead on them.