Why I Left Google DeepMind Over Military AI and Immigration Enforcement
I left Google DeepMind after failing to stop the company from signing unethical military AI deals and supporting immigration enforcement. Despite my detailed proposals and appeals to leaders like Jeff Dean and Demis Hassabis, senior management ignored my warnings. I realized that powerful institutions consistently broke their AI ethics promises under political pressure, making it impossible for me to stay in good conscience.
This essay tells the story of why I left Google DeepMind. It is also the story of something larger: how powerful people and institutions failed, one after another, to keep their AI ethics promises in the face of pressure.
- recitedropper
Nothing but respect to TurnTrout for taking an action like this. The world needs more smart people who are willing to stand for what they feel is right, despite the pressures otherwise. Without that occurring more, our species is going to lose many impactful prisoner's dilemmas coming these next two decades.
This raises my respect for AI researchers a little bit too. I have often felt that the entire industry is pretty tainted to the core, and for better or worse that colors my opinion of the researchers.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I thought it was gross to download pirated art for a student project when I was at Berkeley years ago. So it has been really sad to witness many of the most brilliant minds of this generation answering the siren song of disrespecting the collective effort of others to extract and resell residual value.
I'd guess TurnTrout doesn't agree on that framing, otherwise he probably would not have been at Deep Mind. But clearly he and I agree on other ethical positions; I am nothing but glad to see him stick to his principles here.
- slowin
Props to the author. I left Microsoft due to their work with Israel to spy on Palestinians and record all of their phone conversations (in addition to other IDF collaborations). They ended up walking some of it back, but Satya was complicit.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/microsoft-bloc...
- 0xWTF
I haven't finished reading, but I should note for the group that the author doesn't represent the Anthropic situation accurately. Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war/defense for research and engineering went on the All-In podcast (1) and explained, for quite some time, exactly what happened. You should go listen to it (2). In essence, in the negotiations, Dario kept coming back saying "well, if you need it, call us, we can redline things as needed". This happened over and over and over. Emil's point was that a major conflict, if it were to occur, might happen on the 30 minute clock of an ICBM, and all due respect to Dario, the national security apparatus just doesn't have an allowance in that 30 minutes to call him for a redline. Emil felt Dario had demonstrated he wanted ultimate control via line item veto, and was willing to trade up to and including the survival of the nation for that veto. And a government cannot be expected to pay for that sort of behavior from an entity domiciled in their jurisdiction.
Now, Dario is going to win a decent slice of the economic pie. But as an military acquisitions matter, I gotta say, I have to agree with the undersecretary's position here, and yeah, it makes sense to document a company's undesirable behavior, and in certain circumstances push that information to others. Not the first time the government has found a company under contract acting in a way that appears to be counterproductive to the government's obligations; there's a […]
- srameshc
I did not know about TurnTrout till now and thanks to HN community now I know. I am beyond impressed as to how he lives by his principles. I don't think I have this kind of courgae or confidence and thankfully I don't work for Google or have to quit it. On the other hand we have smart people who have choose to work for companies like Palantir and are proud of it.
- seydor
Principled people have become so rare
- bigyabai
> Even if Google had adopted your Framework, the Pentagon would have refused
> I agree. xAI would still have given over their AI. But if Google had given signs of independence earlier, it could perhaps have built a coalition with OpenAI and Anthropic.
This is like saying that Google and Apple might build a coalition to prevent App Store regulation. These are competitors, they all see moral flexibility as an advantage. They're not going to take a moralist stance if their federal protection is predicated on federal cooperation. All of these FAANG businesses have already bent the knee in anticipation of this, xAI is just riding the coattails of the federal quid-pro-quo.
When you go to work at a megacorp, you're always leaving your ethics at the door. Yes, there's an attractive pie-in-the-sky fantasy that Apple does care about human rights, or that Google isn't evil, but they're always just lies. I disagree with a lot of GCP's customers, but I'm still shocked that a DeepMind employee would make it this far in the career pipeline before seeing the soylent green get made.
- BrenBarn
It's nice to see someone willing to act on their principles. Unfortunately, as this person found out, most people are not that good.
More than that, I tend to think that so many Rubicons have already been crossed by Google and their ilk that it's pointless to think aiming at any narrow ethical target like this will make much a difference. So my appreciation for the author's ethics is tempered by a belief that, even if Google had done everything the author wanted on this one issue, the company would still be evil.
I still think there is almost no chance that companies so large, built on such a wide array of unethical activities, are redeemable. I don't see any real solution but wholesale dismantling of virtually all large companies in existence today, and putting in place far stricter regulations that prevent any companies ever becoming that large and powerful again.
- metalsiliconYT
Respect for sticking to your beliefs. Just out of curiosity though why do people not want smart AI weapons? I would much rather have an onboard AI that can discriminate between unarmed civilians and military assets, seems irresponsible to not... Is a dumb sea mine that blows up everything somehow better than a smart sea mine that knows to not blow up sometimes?