More than 600 Google employees, including those at DeepMind, have signed a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai urging the company to reject the Pentagon’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) for classified tasks.
The employees expressed concerns about the ethics of AI’s use in autonomous weapons, military operations without security guidelines, and mass domestic surveillance by the US military.
They added that AI systems can centralize power and are prone to error. Their involvement with AI technology creates a responsibility to identify and prevent its most unethical and dangerous uses.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) selected Google’s Gemini 3 as the AI model to be used by the GenAI.mil initiative in December last year. Concerns about its use in autonomous weapons and mass surveillance led Anthropic to block their model from being used. The Pentagon responded by imposing sanctions on Anthropic, even though Claude was used to attack Iran last month.
This is not the first time Google employees have opposed the use of the company’s technology for military purposes. Demonstrations against Project Maven (2018) and Project Nimbus (2024) have been held before. In the case of Project Nimbus, 28 employees were fired after demonstrating in the CEO's office to protest Israel's use of technology to oppress Palestinians.
