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Google is using its AI skills to help the Pentagon learn to analyze drone footage

Google is using its AI skills to help the Pentagon learn to analyze drone footage

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The tech giant is involved in a ‘pilot project’ to develop machine vision tools for the Department of Defense

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Google is offering resources to the US Department of Defense for a “pilot project” to analyze drone footage using artificial intelligence. The collaboration was first reported in a story by Gizmodo, which noted that some Google employees had been “outraged” by the news after it was shared in an internal mailing list last week.

Details regarding what Google is actually providing to the DOD are not clear, but we know the work is part of Project Maven — a Pentagon research initiative to develop computer vision that can better understand video footage. Such technology could have a range of uses in the military, including helping to surveil and track targets using drones and providing the brains for static CCTV cameras in military camps and bases. Technology of this sort can be used to recognize basic objects, like cars and people, but has trouble analyzing complex scenes.

Work on Project Maven began last April, and in July, the head of the team overseeing the initiative, Col. Drew Cukor, said the Pentagon was looking for “commercial partners” to help develop its tech. Google, it seems, is one of those partners.

“The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only.”

In a press statement, a Google spokesperson confirmed that the company was providing the Department of Defense with access to its TensorFlow software to help build object recognition algorithms. “We have long worked with government agencies to provide technology solutions,” said the spokesperson. “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. The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only.”

TensorFlow is a piece of free software that has been a linchpin in Google’s AI strategy for years. It offers machine learning engineers a framework to sort data and train their algorithms and is widely used throughout the industry for a number of purposes.

If the Pentagon is using TensorFlow, it’s not a surprise, but a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Verge that Google is also actively helping configure the tech company’s software for use in Project Maven. The same source noted that confidentiality agreements between Google and the Department of Defense meant that details of how many personnel were involved and how in-depth this help is cannot be revealed. Is Google simply walking DOD researchers through TensorFlow’s manual, or are the company’s engineers being paid to develop algorithms using drone video? It’s not clear.

Nevertheless, the use of AI for this sort of task raises a number of ethical questions (in addition to those already associated with America’s use of drones for surveillance and targeted killing abroad). Although the US military has stressed that it will only deploy AI as a partner to human intelligence, computer-assisted decision-making could still encourage mistakes. Human drone operators could become over-reliant on flawed computer analysis, and without proper oversight, these errors might go unnoticed.

For Google and its employees, there are additional quandaries. Are the company’s engineers happy that the software they’re making might be used by the US military one day? What about Google’s shareholders? In the past, the company has been extremely wary of any ties to military research. When it bought a string of robotics companies in 2013, for example, it did its best to distance itself from the firm’s ongoing DARPA contracts.

In this instance, the company says it has yet to make any decisions on how and when it is appropriate for its AI tech to be used for military research. A spokesperson told The Verge: “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.”