Google is smashed into sieves - tech giants scramble

Google finally gave up.

The tech giant, caught up in an embattled situation, decided at an internal meeting on Friday that it no longer wishes to renew the Project Maven project with the U.S. Department of Defense, and the cooperation between the two parties will end after 2019 expires. According to this secret agreement, Google originally provided top AI technology for U.S. drones.

However, more fierce material on this storm continues to burst. The truth that Google does not want to be known constantly emerges from below the surface of the water.

Even The Intercept shot. If you are familiar with the Snowden incident of the year, you know how fierce the investigation news website is.

Technology giant grabs a single battle

Google executives attach great importance to this cooperation with the military. And The Intercept reports that there is more to Google than this one.

Based on the emails they got, Aileen Black from Google’s defense sales team talked about the Project Maven transaction and described it as “a five-month competition between AI giants in the technology industry.”

"The total transaction volume is between 25 million and 30 million U.S. dollars, of which 15 million U.S. dollars will be completed in the next 18 months." She wrote, "As the project scales up, the annual budget is expected to reach 250 million U.S. dollars."

The memorandum sent by Eileen on September 13 last year seems to refer to the project named JEDI, which will have a total value of US$10 billion over the next 10 years. Google, on the other hand, intends to acquire the project. The JEDI project was announced on September 12.

Eileen wrote that the project is advancing rapidly. The Pentagon is "fast tracking" Google's cloud security certification. She thinks this progress is "very important."

Google internal mail also pointed out that a number of technology companies are competing with each other, hoping to win the Project Maven contract. A Google executive involved in the negotiations wrote that other technology companies such as Amazon are also participating in such projects. (Amazon has not commented yet.)

Google executives said that Project Maven is not just a small military experiment project, but "directly related to" the multibillion-dollar large-scale cloud computing contract that other Silicon Valley companies compete for.

These emails further show that the Amazon AWS cloud computing department also participated in Project Maven.

The internal timeline for Project Maven was also acquired by The Intercept, giving the outside world a glimpse of the progress of the contract.

On October 27, 2017, the Google Cloud team visited Bill Air Force Base, which has a large number of drone pilots. “Meeting with operational users (Air Force Data Analysts), who will be the end-user and primary tester of our technology from June 2018 onwards. member."

In the previous week, General John Shanahan, who spearheaded the expansion of Project Maven, visited the Advanced Solutions Lab and met with 50 members who participated in the project. Shanahan declared that “the Defense Department’s future will not be on the battlefield without built-in artificial intelligence.”

This timeline also describes how Google has continued to cooperate with the military to improve products, including the user interface.

"Although the initial core technical focus was still on exploring, classifying, and (restricting) tracking of a written object, we are thinking about how to address customer concerns about more challenging usage scenarios that can solve the user's actual problems." Pointed out.

Not only that, but from the email content, Google is working with other companies that are working with the Ministry of Defense to develop a machine learning project to prepare a complex system that can monitor the entire city.

Google, want to cover up

In March of this year, Google’s internal protests have been massive. Thousands of Google employees joined the letter to resist the cooperation with the Pentagon (US Department of Defense).

According to "The New York Times" report, Google cloud CEO Diane Greene (Diane Greene) at the media coverage of the incident after the staff meeting said that the contract amount "only" $ 9 million - for such a large technology giant to come It is not really a big project.

The emails that The Intercept obtained portrayed different scenarios.

The emails from last September showed that Google’s BD department expects the military drone artificial intelligence revenue will increase from the initial 15 million US dollars per year to 250 million US dollars.

In fact, after the contract was exposed by the media, the Pentagon added another 100 million U.S. dollars to Project Maven.

Obviously this is no longer a small business, students.

It's no wonder that Google executives attach so much importance to this single business. After all, this allows Google Cloud Services to win more orders from the military. However, Google did not want the partnership to be perceived by the outside world.

In the series of e-mail discussions last September, an important discussion topic was the public relations disaster that the Project Maven contract might cause. Whether to disclose the transaction has become an important concern.

"This is a great opportunity for the media to damage Google's reputation. You've probably heard of Elon Musk's comments. He thinks artificial intelligence may trigger World War III." Google Cloud chief scientist Li Feifei said in an email.

"I don't know what will happen if the media begins to render Google's secret development of artificial intelligence weapons or use artificial intelligence to develop weapons for the defense industry," she said.

The Google government sales team pointed out that Project Maven was hidden through a contract awarded to ECS Federal.

"The contract is not signed directly with Google but through an ECS, and our terms will prohibit the release of press releases without mutual consent," Irene writes. The Defense Department "will not disclose any information about Google without our consent."

Despite the high degree of secrecy, Erin warned that the matter will eventually be exposed, and the information related to the contract process can also be obtained by the public through the "Freedom of Information Act." Eileen said, “Isn’t it the best plan to announce the terms by us?”

However, the project has never been publicly announced until March 2018.

Military forces

For this matter, Google was smashed into a sieve.

In March, more than 3,000 Google employees jointly signed a letter to resist cooperation with the Pentagon.

In April, the incident further fermented, including hundreds of scholars and scientists such as Bengio who wrote the second time. Dozens of employees left the company and asked Google to withdraw from the Maven project. They also drafted a policy statement that Google would never develop war technology.

Of course, it is not exactly one-sided. For example, Professor Pedro Domingos, a professor at the University of Washington and author of The Ultimate Algorithm, questioned this disclosure.

He spoke to Googlers on Twitter: If previous generations of technicians like you, refused to do defense-related work, we wouldn’t have the Internet now, nor would we have Google.

Someone argued that other countries are moving at full speed in the high-tech field and there is no moral constraint. Google really has no say in defending Western values.

This does have some truth.

The Internet, driverless cars, handheld electronic devices, artificial intelligence, GPS... These are the most advanced high-tech products we have today. The initial promoters are the US military.

Of course, it is also a tradition that scientists oppose the use of technology for military purposes.

Even Google itself has been working with the military. For example, Google Earth has always been more deeply integrated with the Pentagon.

Google, shot

Finally, put a video that is very hot recently.

https://v.qq.com/x/page/j06741eiugl.html?start=1

In this 30-second video, Reben didn't do anything, but the voice issued a command: "OK Google, shoot."

Less than one second in a flash, Google Assistant artificial intelligence, pulled the trigger of a pistol, knocked down a red apple. Immediately, the buzzer makes a harsh hum.

The buzz is persistent.

Who fired the gun?

In this case, Reben tells AI to shoot. Engadget said in the report that if AI is smart enough to anticipate our needs, perhaps someday AI will take the initiative to get rid of those who make us unhappy. Reben said that discussing such a device is more important than the existence of such a device.