GoKawiilGoogle's UK-based DeepMind workers have voted to unionize. They're sending the company's management a letter asking it to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as their representatives, according to The Guardian. The workers voted back in April, driven by reports that the company was close to reaching a deal with the US Defense Department. They reportedly cited the US government's "capricious Iran war" and its feud with Anthropic as evidence that the department was "not a responsible partner."
The Pentagon announced last week that it had signed deals with several leading AI companies, including Google. Those agreements allow the Defense Department to use their AI technologies for "any lawful use." According to report from The Information, the deals don't allow the government to use the technologies in domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons projects "without appropriate human oversight and control." However, Google and the other companies don't have "any right to control or veto" the government's decisions on how and where to use their AI tech.
Google Gemini and its other AI technologies, which were part of the agreement, were developed by its unified AI team that included the DeepMind workers. Some of the workers who spoke to The Guardian also expressed concerns that the technology they developed were being used to help the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Google reportedly worked with the IDF to expand its access to the company's AI tools, and it entered into a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government back in 2021.
According to The Guardian, the workers wanted to organize to put pressure on Google so that it would commit not to develop technology "whose primary purpose is to cause harm or injury to people." They also want the company establish an independent ethics oversight body and give workers the right to refuse to contribute to specific projects on moral grounds.