More than 650 Google employees are petitioning its CEO to refuse classified artificial intelligence work with the Pentagon.
"We are Google employees who are deeply concerned about ongoing negotiations between Google and the US Department of Defense," the employees wrote in an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai.
"As people working on AI, we know that these systems can centralize power and that they do make mistakes," they wrote.
"We feel that our proximity to this technology creates a responsibility to highlight and prevent its most unethical and dangerous uses.
"Therefore, we ask you to refuse to make our AI systems available for classified workloads," they added.
Google is negotiating an agreement with the Department of Defense that would allow the Pentagon to deploy its Gemini AI models in classified settings, according to a report published earlier this month.
The two parties are discussing an agreement that would allow the Pentagon to use Google's AI for all lawful uses, according to the report in the Information.
During the negotiations, Google has proposed additional language in its contract with the department to prevent its AI from being used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons without appropriate human control, the Information reported.
The Pentagon will continue to deploy frontier AI capabilities through strong industry partnerships across all classification levels, a Pentagon official said, without confirming any talks with Google.
A deal with the Pentagon will help Alphabet expand its government ties, while the U.S. aggressively embeds artificial intelligence into its processes to reduce costs and speed up administrative work.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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