Andrew Ng is 'very glad' Google dropped its AI weapons pledge
Andrew Ng, the founder and former leader of Google Brain, supports Google’s recent decision to drop its pledge not to build AI systems for weapons.
“I’m very glad that Google has changed its stance,” Ng said during an onstage interview Thursday evening with TechCrunch at the Military Veteran Startup Conference in San Francisco.
Earlier this week, Google deleted a 7-year-old pledge from its AI principles web page, which promised the company would not design AI for weapons or surveillance. Alongside the deletion, Google published a blog post penned by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, who noted companies and governments should work together to build AI that “supports national security.”
Google made its AI weapons pledge in 2018 following the Project Maven protests, in which thousands of employees protested the company’s contracts with the U.S. military. The protestors specifically took issue with Google supplying AI for a military program that helped interpret video images and could be used to improve the accuracy of drone strikes.