On February 4, Google updated its “IA principles”, a document detailing how the company would be and would not use artificial intelligence in its products and services. The old version was divided into two sections: “Objectives for AI applications” and “AI applications that we will not continue”, and it explicitly promised not to develop AI weapons or tools surveillance.
The update was noticed for the first time by The Washington PostAnd the most blatant difference is the complete disappearance of any section “AI applications that we will not continue”. In fact, the language language is now focused only on “what Google will do”, without any promise on “what Google will not do”.
Why is it important? Well, if you say that you do not continue the IA weapons, you cannot continue with the IA weapons. It’s pretty cut and dry. However, if you say that you will use “a rigorous design, tests, monitoring and guarantees to alleviate involuntary or harmful results and avoid unfair biases”, you can continue what you want and argue that you have used rigorous guarantees.
Likewise, when Google said he will implement “appropriate human surveillance”, there is no way to us to know what it means. Google is the one who decides exactly what appropriate human surveillance is. This is a problem because it means that the company makes no promise or gives us no solid information. It is simply a question of opening things so that it can move more freely – while trying to give the impression of social responsibility.
Google’s involvement in the United States Defense Ministry Maven project In 2017 and 2018, which led to the original document of the principles of AI. Thousands of its employees protested against the military project and, in response, Google did not renew the agreement and promised to stop continuing the weapons of IA.
However, the rapid advance of a few years and most Google’s competitors engage in this type of project, Meta, Openai and Amazon all allowing military use of their AI technology. With the increased flexibility of its updated AI principles, Google is indeed free to return to the game and to earn military money. It will be interesting to see if Google employees will have something to say about this in the near future.