EFF White Paper: “In June, Google executives announced that the company would be backing away from its provision of AI services to the U.S. military drone program, and would not continue that work after the Project Maven contract is completed. This was in response to a campaign from Google’s own employees, with thousands calling on the company to discontinue its new defense contracting work, and some even beginning to resign over the issue. The new AI ethics principles that Google adopted in response to the debate go beyond military questions, but they do potentially place important limits on whether the company would assist in command, control, or intelligence analysis for weapons systems or other military applications. The principles may well become a model for other major technology companies. But regardless of any actions taken by the big tech companies, the U.S. and other governments have plenty of their own resources to assemble machine learning initiatives. This includes working with companies that have much less cultural accountability to the public, consumers, or even their own engineering staff than Google does. And whether governments are acting alone, with Silicon Valley or with other companies, militaries and their contractors need to carefully consider potential dangers, and weigh the consequences of different technology development paths, before going “all in” on AI and machine learning…”