Project-MAVEN - A lethal attack by AI weapons by picking up racial, gender and other biases from society ...???

Google Sets Limits for Project MAVEN but Allows to Continue US Defence Work 

#Project-MAVEN

Google CEO Mr.Sundar Pichai affirmed that the AI is as more as profound to humanity than fire & war. Last Thursday Mr.Pichai offered guidelines for how Google will-and won’t-use the technology. One thing Pichai says Google won’t do: work on AI for weapons. But the guidelines leave much to the discretion of company executives and allow Google to continue to work for the military.

This is a response to more than 4,500 Googlers signing a letter protesting the company’s involvement in a Pentagon project called Maven that uses machine learning to interpret drone surveillance video and imagery. In the letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai, Google employees expressed concern that the U.S. military could weaponize AI and apply the technology towards refining drone strikes and other kinds of lethal attacks.“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” the letter begins, before going on to explain that Google’s involvement in Project Maven stands to damage its brand and its trust among the public. Researchers have warned AI systems could pick up racial, gender and other biases from society at large depending on the training sets and methods used to teach them to process data.

Pichai’s response? We hear you, but you can trust us to do this responsibly. “We will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas,” Pichai’s post says. “These collaborations are important and we’ll actively look for more ways to augment the critical work of these organizations and keep service members and civilians safe.”

Google also assured to incorporate “strong safety and security practices” and “privacy design principles” and to ensure its AI systems are “accountable to people.”

In a blog post, Mr.Pichai said the company won’t stop working with the military entirely: It will still potentially work with the armed forces on areas including cybersecurity, recruitment and training, veterans’ healthcare and search and rescue. Google is widely seen as a potential contender for a massive contract to move Defense Department systems to cloud servers. “These collaborations are important and we’ll actively look for more ways to augment the critical work of these organizations and keep service members and civilians safe,” he wrote.

According to the defense department, Project Maven, also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team, launched in April 2017. Among its objectives, the project aims to develop and integrate “computer-vision algorithms needed to help military and civilian analysts encumbered by the sheer volume of full-motion video data that DoD collects every day in support of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations,” according to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon had planned to have its first set of algorithms installed to “warfighting systems” by the end of 2017.

The petition, originally published in the New York Times, also rejects the argument that Google’s involvement isn’t problematic because the likes of Microsoft and Amazon are also partners in the project, stating that Google’s unique history and influence set it apart.

A spokesperson confirmed to a blog site that Google was providing the defence department with TensorFlow APIs, which help military analysts detect certain objects in imagery. “We have long worked with government agencies to provide technology solutions. This specific project is a pilot with the Department of Defense,to provide open source TensorFlow APIs that can assist in object recognition on unclassified data,” Gizmodo quoted the Google rep as saying. “The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only. Military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns. We’re actively discussing this important topic internally and with others as we continue to develop policies and safeguards around the development and use of our machine learning technologies.”

It is improvised that the project to cost under $70 million for its first year. In October of last year, the Pentagon said it hoped to expand the scope of Project Maven in Phase 2 of the program, turning the expansive data into “actionable intelligence and decision-quality insights at speed.”

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