Google dropped a pledge not to use artificial intelligence for weapons and surveillance systems on Tuesday. And it’s just the latest sign that Big Tech is no longer concerned with the potential blowback that can come when consumer-facing tech companies get big, lucrative contracts to develop police surveillance tools and weapons of war.
Google came under serious pressure back in 2018 after it was revealed the company had a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense for something called Project Maven, which used AI for drone imaging. Shortly after that, Google released a statement laying out “our principles,” which included a pledge to not allow its AI to be used for technologies that “cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” weapons, surveillance, and anything that, “contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”
But that web post from 2018, authored by CEO Sundar Pichai, now has a note at the top of the page, reading “We’ve made updates to our AI Principles” and pushing readers to check out AI.Google for the latest.
What’s the latest? Well, all that stuff about not using AI for weapons and surveillance is just gone. Instead, there are three principles listed, with the top being “Bold Innovation.”
“We develop AI that assists, empowers, and inspires people in almost every field of human endeavor; drives economic progress; and improves lives, enables scientific breakthroughs, and helps address humanity’s biggest challenges,” the website reads in the kind of Big Tech corporate speak we’ve all come to expect.
Underneath that heading of innovation, you’ll find the promise to develop AI “where the likely overall benefits substantially outweigh the foreseeable risks.” The rest of the section mentions the “frontier of AI research” and hopes to be able to “accelerate scientific discovery.”
The second section, titled “Responsible development and deployment,” finally gets into territory about the ethics of AI, but is much softer than anything the company was putting out in 2018. The company said it believes in “employing rigorous design, testing, monitoring, and safeguards to mitigate unintended or harmful outcomes and avoid unfair bias.” That last part is likely a nod to Republicans who so frequently whine that AI is biased against conservatives.
Other changes are more subtle. Previously, the company said “we will not design or deploy AI” for “technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.” Now, the mention of human rights pledges that the company will be “implementing appropriate human oversight, due diligence, and feedback mechanisms to align with user goals, social responsibility, and widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.” That’s a small change, but it is a change that hypothetically allows for a lot more wiggle room.
The company also says it will be, “Promoting privacy and security, and respecting intellectual property rights,” perhaps an acknowledgment that so many AI tools have been trained on massive amounts of copyrighted material.
What’s behind this shift? It seems obvious at this point that Trump’s ascendancy to the White House again means that Big Tech can drop the mask. Silicon Valley has long profited from contracts with the U.S. military. It’s a big reason Silicon Valley even exists if you know anything about how it developed in the 1980s thanks to President Ronald Reagan’s defense build-up pumping $5 billion into the region annually. But there was a period from roughly 2015 to 2025 when Big Tech didn’t like the public relations nightmare of looking like they were on the side of people who drop bombs and arrest peaceful protesters.
All of that is out the window now, as the big players in tech contribute millions to Trump and companies like Google decide they don’t mind being seen as the cops. It’s a dark world ahead for many reasons. But Big Tech dropping its mask in favor of Trumpism will probably reveal a side to Silicon Valley that used to be much more hush-hush.