Google Lifts a Ban on Using Its AI for Weapons and Surveillance

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Google announced Tuesday that it is overhauling the principles governing how it uses artificial intelligence and other advanced technology. The company removed language promising not to pursue “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people,” “technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms,” and “technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

The changes were disclosed in a note appended to the top of a 2018 blog post unveiling the guidelines. “We’ve made updates to our AI Principles. Visit AI.Google for the latest,” the note reads.

In a blog post on Tuesday, a pair of Google executives cited the increasingly widespread use of AI, evolving standards, and geopolitical battles over AI as the “backdrop” to why Google’s principals needed to be overhauled.

Google first published the principles in 2018 as it moved to quell internal protests over the company’s decision to work on a US military drone program. In response, it declined to renew the government contract and also announced a set of principles to guide future uses of its advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence. Among other measures, the principles stated Google would not develop weapons, certain surveillance systems, or technologies that undermine human rights.

But in an announcement on Tuesday, Google did away with those commitments.

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