Google Staff Urge Pichai to Refuse Classified Military AI Work

Hundreds of AI researchers at Alphabet Inc.’s Google have signed onto a letter urging Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai to refuse to make the company’s artificial intelligence systems available for classified workloads for US defense missions, according to organizers of the effort.

“We are Google employees who are deeply concerned about ongoing negotiations between Google and the US Department of Defense,” reads the letter, which was provided to Bloomberg News. “As people working on AI, we know that these systems can centralize power and that they do make mistakes.”

Organizers of the letter said it has garnered ...