Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
- Google pulled out of the US Defense Department’s artificial intelligence (AI) program, known as Project Maven, amid a wave of protests over tech companies’ involvement in government contracts.
- Project Maven would not only speed up the process of getting critical battlefield information to commanders, but also frees up human operators to focus on higher-level tasks.
- Defense Secretary James Mattis has ambitious plans to leverage cutting-edge commercial technology for military purposes.
- The US military says AI is a big part of its future and Project Maven is one of the first steps to continue expanding — with or without Google’s aid.
- Since its launch in April 2017, Project Maven has been deployed to at least five clandestine locations in Africa and the Middle East.
Google made headlines earlier last month when it pulled out of the US Defense Department’s flagship artificial intelligence program known as Project Maven, which leverages sophisticated algorithms to analyze drone footage.
Until then, the project had been so secretive that few people knew Google was involved — not even the former executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, who now sits on the Defense Department’s Innovation Advisory Board — let alone what it actually is.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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