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After around 3,000 Google employees rebelled against Google's involvement in the Pentagon's Project Maven AI program[1], some employees have decided to quit in protest, according to a report.
Some 4,000 employees have now signed the petition against Project Maven and "about a dozen" have resigned due to Google's continued involvement in the project, according to Gizmodo[2].
Some 400 technology academics and researchers from around the world have also thrown their weight behind the Google protesters' cause, publishing an open letter calling on the company to withdraw from Project Maven and commit to "not weaponizing its technology".
Project Maven aims to develop AI that can spot humans and objects in vast amounts of video captured by military drones.
Google has previously said the technology flags images for human review and is for "non-offensive uses only".
It has provided the Department of Defense with its TensorFlow APIs[3] to assist in object recognition, which the Pentagon believes will eventually turn its stores of video into "actionable intelligence".
But some of the resigning employees believe Google shouldn't be involved in any military work and that algorithms have no place in identifying potential targets.
The employees are also not impressed with company executives' response to the initial protest, which called on Google to cancel its contracting role in Project Maven and vow never to build technology for war.
"We believe that Google should not be in the business of war," the open letter from Google employees stated.
"Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and