gizmodo.com
archive.fo
rt.com
>Google has partnered with the United States Department of Defense to help the agency develop artificial intelligence for analyzing drone footage, a move that set off a firestorm among employees of the technology giant when they learned of Google’s involvement.
>Google’s pilot project with the Defense Department’s Project Maven, an effort to identify objects in drone footage, has not been previously reported, but it was discussed widely within the company last week when information about the project was shared on an internal mailing list, according to sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the project.
>Project Maven is also known as the "Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT)." The project started in April of last year with a mission to “accelerate DoD’s integration of big data and machine learning.”
>A Google spokesperson responded to the report, saying, “We have long worked with government agencies to provide technology solutions. This specific project is a pilot with the Department of Defense, to provide open source TensorFlow APIs that can assist in object recognition on unclassified data.”
>Speaking to a crowd of military and industry technology experts, many from Silicon Valley, Cukor professed the US to be in the midst of AI arms race. “Many of you will have noted that Eric Schmidt is calling Google an AI company now, not a data company,” he said, although Cukor did not specifically cite Google as a Maven partner.
>b-but Google is a private company, they can censor and do whatever they want
>meanwhile they actively work with military intelligence and surveillance arms of the US government
This project also explains some of that missing Pentagon money.
