Totalitarianism is the form of government that subjects the individual to the centralized rule of a tyrannical master that puts all forms of public and private production and consumption under its control.
Wikimedia Commons A big part of a government’s ability to wrangle in the population is its co-opting of large corporations under the banner of carrying out the ‘state’s business’. This unofficial merger becomes especially dangerous when it is controlled by what President Dwight Eisenhower called the ‘military industrial complex’. IFL Science reports that a bevy of employees from internet monolith, Google, have quit the company amidst that reports of a troubling project being carried out between it and the Pentagon.
Defense.gov According to reports, Google is currently laboring to develop a military drone for the Department of Defense and is being done under the title of “Project Maven”. It made the announcement back in March and it did not take long for workers to become alarmed at what was being planned The word ‘maven’ is a Yiddish word meaning “an accumulator of knowledge”, which provides a clue as to the purpose of the drone. The cooperation between Google and the DOD is rumored to have caused at least a dozen to announce that they are leaving the Alphabet, Inc. company. “At some point, I realized I could not in good faith recommend anyone join Google, knowing what I knew. I realized if I can’t recommend people join here, then why am I still here?” one employee said. Gizmodo writes that the departing employees were upset that the proposed drone would utilize a “military program that controversially uses machine-learning and image-recognition software to sift through millions of hours of drone-captured video footage and identify things of interest – people included.” [caption id=“attachment_39363” align=“alignnone” width=“650”]
AppleMark[/caption] Shaw Global News Concerns caused the employees to approach superiors who, it is alleged, ignored their input. An internal memo was then composed and sent to senior company officials and is said to raise “ethical questions over the use of AI-controlled drones in military situations.” When that didn’t work, a petition was circulated around the company and obtained almost 4,000 signatures form Google’s 90,000, or about 4.4 percent of workers. Perhaps more concerning for Google is the opprobrium being cast on it by noted scientists and academics. Over 200 researchers working in the artificial intelligence field delivered an open letter written via the International Committee for Robot Arms Control imploring Google not to involve itself in weaponization projects, saying in part:
Max Pixel “The private data collected by Google comes with a responsibility not only to use that data to improve its own technologies and expand its business, but also to benefit society. The company’s motto ‘Don’t Be Evil’ famously embraces this responsibility.” None of this backlash has budged Google or put a stop to ‘Project Maven’. Some employees feel that the stubbornness on Google’s part is foolish and will draw outrage from the population. “It’s not like Google is this little machine-learning startup that’s trying to find clients in different industries,” another employee told Gizmodo. “It just seems like it makes sense for Google and Google’s reputation to stay out of that.” ‘Don’t Be Evil’ is a noble goal but it obviously doesn’t pay that well for Google.
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