DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: Google’s Withdrawal from Pentagon AI Project Risks US Lives.

In April, some 3,100 Google employees signed a letter urging the company to forgo work on Project Maven, a pioneering, if still small-scale, Air Force program that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to sort through surveillance video footage. In May, company officials announced they would do no more work on Maven after their contract runs out next year.

Speaking Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Washington, D.C., Work said that company employees who worry that the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence will kill people should should consider that it would increase risks for someone else.

“They say, ‘What if the work is ultimately used to take lives. But what if it saves American lives? 500 American lives? Or 500 lives of our allies?”

Work said he isn’t hearing the same employees complain that Google also opened an AI research center in China last year.

I’m of two minds on this one. On the one hand, if everybody else is going to use AI — and they will — then we’d better have the best. On the other hand… Skynet.