The company will sell the military unrestricted Gemini access, but won't build autonomous weapons technology.
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Google joins OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI in granting the Pentagon broad classified AI access . On the deal, Pentagon AI chief Cameron Stanley said that avoiding dependence on a single vendor was a priority.
Google's agreement requires the company to help modify its AI safety settings and filters at the government's request, with the contract including language stating that the AI system shouldn’t be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons “without appropriate human oversight and control,” but also specifies that the deal doesn’t give Google “any right to… veto lawful government operational decision-making,” which doesn’t make the agreed restrictions appear particularly solid.
You may like Google and Pentagon in talks to run custom AI chips inside classified environments Anthropic refuses to lower AI guardrails for The Pentagon OpenAI strikes deal with Pentagon following Claude blacklisting A spokesperson for Google Public Sector told The Information that the company is "proud to be part of a broad consortium of leading AI labs and technology and cloud companies providing AI services and infrastructure in support of national security ."
Google notified the government on February 11 that it wouldn’t continue in the drone swarm challenge, which sought technology for converting spoken commands into digital instructions for coordinating autonomous drones. The company officially cited a lack of resources, but internal records reviewed by Bloomberg showed the withdrawal followed an ethics review.
More than 600 Google employees delivered a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday urging him to reject the classified deal, arguing that it was the only way to prevent Google's AI from being misused.
Google faced a similar internal revolt in 2018 over Project Maven , a Pentagon contract for AI analysis of drone surveillance footage. The company let that contract lapse after roughly 4,000 employees signed a petition, and Palantir assumed the work, which has since grown into a $13 billion program of record.
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/security-software/google-signs-classified-pentagon-ai-deal-but-exits-100-million-drone-swarm-program#main
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