Artificial intelligence is being weaponized across all facets of life, and Google’s recent change of principles is a sign of things to come

© Getty Images / Devrimb

Last week, Google revised its artificial intelligence principles, removing the company’s stance against using AI to develop weapons or technologies or directly facilitate injury to people, or for surveillance that violates internationally accepted norms.

Google’s AI head Demis Hassabis said the guidelines were being overhauled in a changing world and that AI should protect “national security”. 

RT has interviewed Dr. Mathew Maavak, a senior consultant for Malaysia’s National Artificial Intelligence Roadmap 2021-2025 (AI-Rmap), scholar on global risks, geopolitics, strategic foresight, governance and AI, on the potential consequences of Google’s new policies.

RT: Does this mean that Google and other corporations will now start making AI-powered weapons?

Dr. Mathew Maavak: First and foremost, Google was largely the creation of the US national security apparatus or simply, the “deep state”.The origins of many, if not all, Big Tech entities today can be traced to ground-breaking research undertaken by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and its predecessor the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). So, the quasi-private entity called Google is inextricably beholden to its “national security” origins, as are other Big Tech entities. Weaponizing AI and creating AI-powered weapons is a natural progression for these entities. Microsoft has long established its own “military empire”.

Furthermore, Big Tech platforms have been extensively used for data and intelligence-gathering activities worldwide. This is a reason why China has banned many US Big Tech software and apps. A nation cannot be sovereign if it is beholden to Big Tech!

As for Google changing its guidelines on AI, this should not come as a surprise. Big Tech was actively promoting universal AI governance models through various high-profile institutional shills, United Nations agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), think tanks and national governments. Through my recent work in this field, it became abundantly clear that the US government sought to stifle the development of indigenous AI worldwide by promoting half-baked and turgid AI Governance models that are riddled with contradictions. The gap between lofty aspirations and longstanding realities are simply unbridgeable.

 

Read more

 Google removes ban on weaponizing AI

The same playbook was deployed to push Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) schemes worldwide – imposing heavy costs on developing nations and corporations alike. Now, the US and Big Capital are ditching the very ESG schemes they had devised. 

Unfortunately, many nations fell for these ploys, investing significant money and resources into building fanciful ESG and AI frameworks. These nations risk becoming permanently dependent on Big Tech under what I call “AI neo-colonialism”.

Alphabet’s Google and YouTube, Microsoft’s Bing and Elon Musk’s X have long weaponized their platforms before this recent change in AI policy. Big Tech’s search algorithms have been weaponized to erase dissenters and contrarian platforms from the digital landscape, effectively imposing a modern-day damnatio memoriae.I have to use the Russian search engine Yandex in order to retrieve my old articles. 

RT: Why is this change being made now?

Dr. Mathew Maavak: All weapons systems increasingly rely on AI. The Russia-Ukrainian conflict alone has seen AI being used in the battlefield. The extensive use of drones, with possible swarm intelligence capabilities, is just one out of many anecdotal examples of AI usage in Ukraine. You cannot create next-generation weapons and countermeasures without AI. You cannot bring a knife to a gunfight, as the old saying goes.

It must be noted that one of the most profitable and future-proof sectors, with guaranteed returns on investments, is the Military-Industrial Complex. Weaponizing AI and making AI-powered weapons is just a natural course of action for Big Tech.

It is also quite telling that the leaders of the two AI superpowers — the United States and China — skipped the recent Paris AI Summit. The event devolved into a scripted talk shop orchestrated by Big Tech. Alongside the United Kingdom, the United States also refused to sign the declaration on making AI “safe for all.” Clearly, this event was staged to suppress AI innovation in developing nations while legitimizing the weaponization of AI by major powers.

RT: Google’s ‘principles’, to begin with, are set by Google itself, are voluntary and non-binding under any law. So theoretically nothing was preventing the company from just going ahead with any kind of AI research it wanted. Why did it feel the need to make it “official”?

Dr. Mathew Maavak: Google’s so-called “principles” were never determined by the company alone. They were a mere sop for public consumption, perfectly encapsulated by its laughably cynical motto: “Don’t be evil.” 

Its parent company Alphabet is owned by the usual suspects from Big Capital such as Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street etc. – all of whom are private arms of the US deep state.