At a time when Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its implications on jobs, intellectual property, online privacy, and more continue to be debated, Google has silently changed its policies on what the technology would not be used for. Google has removed a pledge to not build AI for weapons or surveillance from its website.

CREDIT: REUTERS

According to reports, Google made the changes to its AI principles, first published in 2018, this week, to remove pledges it had made promising it would not "design or deploy" AI tools for use in weapons or surveillance technology.

After the changes, there is a new section in AI principles titled "responsible development and deployment," instead of the "applications we will not pursue" in the original document.

It notes that Google will implement "appropriate human oversight, due diligence, and feedback mechanisms to align with user goals, social responsibility, and widely accepted principles of international law and human rights."

CREDIT: REUTERS

In a blog post, Google senior vice president James Manyika and Demis Hassabis, who leads the AI lab Google DeepMind, defended the move, arguing that businesses and democratic governments need to work together on AI that "supports national security".

They also stated that Google's AI principles published in 2018 needed to be updated as the technology had evolved.

"Billions of people are using AI in their everyday lives. AI has become a general-purpose technology, and a platform which countless organisations and individuals use to build applications," the blog post said.

It should be noted that in the past, Google has faced criticism from its own employees for working with the US and Israeli militaries. One of the most notable instances was Project Maven, a Pentagon project that used machine learning to help the military identify targets for drone strikes. Google worked on the project from 2017 until it dropped the contract due to employee objections.

CREDIT: REUTERS

More recently, Google had worked with the Israeli government in 2021 on the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus to provide cloud computing and AI services. In 2024, Google had fired 28 employees after they held a sit-in protest over Project Nimbus.

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