You might remember Project Maven, an AI partnership between Google and the Pentagon, where Google is providing Pentagon with access to TensorFlow. TensorFlow is a software library for machine learning applications such as neural networks. Pentagon uses it to help military analysts detect objects in images. It’s also great for training autonomous, armed UAVs. I wrote about Project Maven in the post You Might Be Helping Pentagon Train Killer Drones. Google’s AI flirt with the Pentagon warmongers was also a reason why I decided to increase my effort to stop using Google services entirely. This endeavor is described in detail in the post Dump Google.

When details of Project Maven surfaced, it did not sit well will many Google employees. Several thousand signed a petition demanding that their employer stopped dicking around with weaponized AI. About a dozen employees even resigned over the issue.

Now looks like Google is having seconds thoughts about their questionable partnership with the Pentagon. Gizmondo recently reported that Google will not be renewing the Project Maven contract in 2019. It would have been even better if they just pulled out, but I guess that would be wishful thinking.

If this means Google will not start similar projects in the future remains to be seen. Perhaps they’ll just get better at keeping it under the radar.