Google picks principles over $10bn Pentagon deal
Employees revolted against its decision to vie for the contract
San Francisco — Alphabet’s Google is no longer vying for a $10bn cloud computing contract with the US defense department. This is partly because the company’s new ethical guidelines do not align with the project, Google said on Monday, without elaborating. The company said it “couldn’t be assured that [the JEDI deal] would align with our AI Principles and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications”. The principles bar use of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) software in weapons as well as services that violate international norms for surveillance and human rights. Google was provisionally certified in March to handle US government data with “moderate” security, but Amazon.com and Microsoft have higher clearances. Amazon was widely viewed among Pentagon officials and technology vendors as the frontrunner for the contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI. Googl...
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