Google employees demand the company quit Project Maven
Reports emerged that thousands of Google employees had written to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding the company withdraw from Project Maven, a Department of Defense program using AI to identify buildings and targets of interest to the military in drone footage. The letter said "we believe that Google should not be in the business of war," and gathered more than 3,100 signatures, with some accounts putting the eventual total near 4,000. The protest escalated to resignations. Employees publicly contesting a business decision was unusual at the time, and the question of whether AI should be put to military and government use surfaced here as a labor dispute inside the company.