Google bows out of bidding for $10 billion contract due to new AI principles

The search giant says that the Pentagon's work does not comply with its new ethical commitments around artificial intelligence

Google has withdrawn from the bidding for a $10 billion Pentagon contract, citing its new ethical guidelines on AI.

Google is not the only tech giant to have been competing to win the Department of Defense's JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) project, which deals with hosting classified and unclassified information - other contestants include Microsoft and Amazon. However, it is the first to have disqualified itself from the process.

In a statement, the firm said, ‘we couldn't be assured that [the JEDI deal] would align with our AI Principles and...we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications'.

Google was hoping that the $10 billion contract would boost its cloud business, which lags behind that of AWS and Microsoft. The company was certified to handle data of ‘moderate' security in March, but its competitors have higher clearance levels.

The statement continued:

‘Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it… Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload'.

Google drew up a new policy on artificial intelligence this year, following staff complaints about its work with the US government on use of AI in weapons systems. That was shortly followed by a pledge, signed by more than 2,400 scientists, who want regulations to be implemented on the development and use of autonomous weapons.

Withdrawing from JEDI is the first visible sign of Google following its new guidelines, which stipulate that the company will continue to work with governments in areas like training and cybersecurity, but other areas might be limited.

For example, the firm will not work on surveillance that falls outside ‘internationally accepted norms', or on anything dangerous, unless ‘the benefits substantially outweigh the risks'.

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