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3 Years After Maven Uproar, Google Cozies Pentagonora

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Jack Poulson, a former Googler who is now the executive director of the nonprofit Tech Inquiry, says air gaps and Maven protesters deserve to be hindered by the company’s plans and to present some AI oversight. But he says the broad exceptions introduced in the AI ​​principles and Google’s permissive interpretation make it a shield used to deflect analysis rather than a meaningful moral compass. “I think they just want a compelling denial,” Poulson says. He left Google in late 2018 as a result of a project that would adapt search technology Compliance with Chinese Internet censorship.

Alphabet Workers’ Union, which represents a small minority of Google’s employees, he tweeted on Monday Although Google’s AI principles state that technology must always be “socially beneficial,” Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability “would modernize DOD’s war tools and lead to extrajudicial killings of people around the world.”

Google continues to lag behind Amazon and Microsoft for both cloud computing commercial agreements and government and defense contracts. Both have higher security certificates than Google, and allow them to manage classified information. And they both more clearly support working with the U.S. government on national security.

Amazon has agreements with many sections of the Pentagon, including the Special Operations Command to use AI to analyze media intercepted by U.S. troops. Microsoft contracts include an Army project providing soldiers with augmented reality headphones. It attracted protests from workers, but not on the scale of Google. An Amazon spokesman said the company’s commitment to “ensuring that our military and defense members have access to the best technology at the best price is stronger than ever.” Microsoft declined to comment; the company says its Responsible AI Office is reviewing its “sensitive” uses of the technology.

The opportunity for Google to compete for a wide-ranging Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability came after the Pentagon in July. he discarded the original version, Called JEDI and valued at $ 10 billion, which was donated to Microsoft. Amazon and Oracle complained in the lawsuits that the allocation process was unfair.

The JWCC has a different format that will share work between different companies. The Pentagon said Amazon and Microsoft are pre-qualified to make the offer and will consider inviting IBM, Oracle and Google.

That structure could be good for Google. The company said in late 2018 that it would not make an offer to JEDI because it could violate its AI principles and, significantly, it did not have a security certificate. Kurian said on his blog on Friday that the lack of certificates was the “first” reason, but that Google now had additional certificates. He said the JWCC format would allow Google to select contracts within the framework of its AI principles, leaving more work to others.

Jerry McGinn, executive director of George Mason University’s Government Procurement Center, expects multi-cloud contracts to become commonplace as federal cloud spending grows. This can help Google negotiate the limitations of its AI principles and its lack of certification.

Modular contracts reduce the risk of legal challenges like the one that sank JEDI and add competition that enhances value for the Pentagon, McGinn says.

Bloomberg Government estimated By 2020, the federal government had spent $ 6.6 trillion on cloud contracts, with defense agencies accounting for nearly a third of that total, and cloud spending was growing at about 10 percent a year. In 2019 the Pentagon released an AI strategy that calls for the adoption of technology All aspects of the U.S. military, the basis of cloud computing.

What exactly will be required of them by the JWCC contractor is not yet known. The name of the program suggests that some work may be directly related to armed conflict. The Pentagon chief information officer said in July that the JWCC would provide better support than JEDI for AI projects — a specialty of Google — including a program to develop algorithms to help commanders identify targets. The Pentagon expects to release a formal call for proposals in the coming weeks and aims to award contracts by April 2022.


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