Since the murder of the Afro-American George Floyd by a white policeman on the 25th of may, most of the giants of the tech are committed to redoubling their efforts in the fight against racism. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has committed to hire more people from minority backgrounds to positions of responsibility, to pay $ 12 million to associations working against racism, and also offer advertising space. “Our black community suffers […] For those who are experiencing grief, anger, sadness and fear, you are not alone. We support racial equality and all those who are struggling to get it”, had stated, inter alia, the chairman and CEO.
But for Google employees, the measures announced are not enough. In an open letter, more than 1 600 employees are asking Google to stop selling its technology to the forces of the order. They mention in particular an artificial intelligence used to “hunt down immigrants thanks to the drones of surveillance” and “donations to politicians racists and the representatives of white supremacy”.
“We are disappointed that Google continues to sell its technology to police forces rather than join the millions of people who want to stop funding these institutions,” write the employees. “Why help the institutions responsible for the knee on the neck of George Floyd to be more effective in their organization? In addition to that, the same forces of police of Clarkstown that Google describes as a success have been prosecuted several times for illegal surveillance of the organizers of Black Lives Matter.” This second accusation refers to the fact that Google has publicly acknowledged that the police of Clarkstown had used G Continued to share information and digital evidence. In the same way, Google is also working with the Seattle police, and its venture capital arm, GV, invests in artificial intelligence used by the police.
Mobilization winning in the past
A spokesperson for Google responded to TechCrunch: “We are committed to fight systemic racism, and our employees have made more than 500 suggestions in recent weeks that we are in the process of reviewing. We were the first big company to decide, years ago, not to commercialize the facial recognition and we have principles on the IA very clear that prohibit its use or sale for purposes of monitoring”. In recent weeks, other companies have taken this decision, such as IBM or Amazon, which has announced a one-year moratorium on the use of the tool, facial recognition, Rekognition, by the police.
The engagement of employees of Google is not anodyne, especially when you know that the company had already had to give up its partnerships with the authorities in similar conditions. In 2018, the Maven project, which consisted of a collaboration between Google and the Pentagon on technology of image recognition, had had to be aborted. A few months later, after strong protests of the employees, the giant of the tech had been forced to make a cross on the project JEDI, focusing on cloud computing, since won by Microsoft.
The editorial team conseilleReconnaissance facial: Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM are clamoring for laws clairesFaut prohibit facial recognition?Face recognition in the era of the port general masqueSujetsAlphabetGooglePolice1 commentaireCYRIL JACQUETle 23/06/2020 16:57
These employees are, they agree to put their technology at the service of the underworld? One may ask the question ?
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