{"id":420578,"date":"2026-04-27T21:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/420578\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:14:13","slug":"google-staff-urge-chief-executive-to-block-us-military-ai-use-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/420578\/","title":{"rendered":"Google staff urge chief executive to block US military AI use \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 560 Google<\/a> employees have signed an open letter to chief executive Sundar Pichai<\/a> urging him to refuse to let the US<\/a> government use its artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> technology for classified military operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to see AI benefit humanity, not being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways,\u201d read the letter, which was sent to Pichai on Monday. \u201cThis includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, but extends beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads,\u201d it continued. \u201cOtherwise, such uses may occur without our knowledge or the power to stop them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big tech companies are under pressure to take a stance on military and intelligence use of their AI products after a clash between the Pentagon and AI start-up Anthropic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anthropic\u2019s chief executive Dario Amodei refused to give the government unfettered access to its models and insisted on guardrails to prevent them being used for lethal autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. <\/p>\n

In response, Anthropic was designated a supply-chain risk and US president Donald Trump<\/a> ordered that all government departments stop using its Claude chatbot. Anthropic has challenged the designation in court.<\/p>\n

\"\"Kerry Group CEO on the impact of Middle East conflict, AI and drive to keep bread fresher for longer<\/p>\n

Alphabet staff are responding to reports that Google is close to agreeing terms with the Department of Defence that will allow its Gemini model to be used in classified operations without the formal safeguards that Anthropic demanded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t just about the military, AI-powered mass surveillance is a direct threat to American civil liberties,\u201d said one person involved in the campaign, who asked to remain anonymous. \u201cThis is not low-risk and theoretical; we are already in these fights. We see AI being used to support authoritarianism in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Tech workers under stress as pressure to roll out artificial intelligence projects mountsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The letter to Pichai was co-ordinated by staff at DeepMind, Google\u2019s AI lab, said two of the people involved. Two-fifths of signatories work in the AI division, with a similar share in the Cloud unit and the rest across Alphabet.<\/p>\n

More than 18 senior staff \u2013 including principals, directors and vice-presidents \u2013 have signed, they added. About two-thirds chose to be named, with the rest deciding to remain anonymous.<\/p>\n

DeepMind\u2019s chief scientist Jeff Dean has been the most vocal executive on the issue so far. In February, he posted on X that \u201cMass surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment and has a chilling effect on freedom of expression.\u201d He added that he still backed a 2018 commitment to ban lethal autonomous weapons.<\/p>\n

Google has faced previous protests against its military ties. In 2018, several staff quit and thousands signed a petition against Project Maven, which used AI to improve drone strikes. Google did not renew the contract and pledged not to work on AI for weapons or surveillance.<\/p>\n

However, last year it quietly dropped that stance in an update of its AI Principles, deleting language that promised not to pursue \u201cweapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Co-founder Demis Hassabis explained the decision by saying that the world has changed since Google acquired DeepMind in 2014. Multiple frontier models are now widely available and US tech companies have a duty to help the country defend itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe take a lot of inspiration from what happened before, with the anti-Maven protest, and the fact that many senior leaders share these views,\u201d said a second person involved in the letter. \u201cThere is almost total consensus against the programme in DeepMind.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI faced a backlash from its researchers after striking its own deal with the government soon after the Anthropic ban. Chief executive Sam Altman later apologised, calling his actions \u201copportunistic and sloppy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking the wrong call right now would cause irreparable damage to Google\u2019s reputation, business, and role in the world,\u201d the letter concludes. \u201cWe know from our own history that our leaders can make the right choices, for ourselves and for the world, when the stakes are high.\u201d \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n

[\u00a0AI boom threatens to cause \u2018significant upheaval\u2019 for Irish tech jobsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 560 Google employees have signed an open letter to chief executive Sundar Pichai urging him to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,3673,218,219,1711,61,60,1005,80,115],"class_list":["post-420578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-google","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sundar-pichai","tag-technology","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}