Why I Left Google DeepMind Over Unethical AI Deals
I left Google DeepMind after discovering the company's continued support for DHS immigration enforcement and signing an unrestricted military AI contract with the Pentagon. Despite my detailed proposal for ethical safeguards and appeals to leaders like Jeff Dean and Demis Hassabis, senior management ignored my warnings. I realized I could no longer stay in good conscience while powerful institutions failed to keep their AI ethics promises under pressure.
I cannot return to you and say 'I defied and then I won.' But I'm at least here to say 'I defied.'
- vintagedave
Very long to read, but highly principled. I feel his desperation. Powerful people can too easily do little, and ignore their consciences. I appreciate he named those he spoke to; it came across as fair, and makes them accountable for what they did or did not do.
- mark_l_watson
Great show of principles and character, +1000 to the author.
What can we "regular people" do?
My approach, which is very inconvenient, is to try as much as possible to not feed my consumer spending money to tech giants. In some cases I fail at this (e.g., my wife and I will always buy a family membership for YouTube Plus with music; we still order some things online from Amazon) but I make an effort.
I have been an AI practitioner for over 40 years and I want to use the very best AI coding agents, etc., but I am forcing myself to just use access to cheaper open weight models from smaller US inferencing companies (my last $$ subscription runs out in a few days).
- hmokiguess
However way people that are deep into the cog wake up I support it. Once the truth was seen you didn't bend and stood by your principles, it must have been very challenging to navigate that from the inside with your entire identity tied to and associated to the thing you ended up growing out from. Appreciate you, welcome to your new life. May you find peace and continue to do good work next.
- tdb7893
I'll always support someone taking a personal stand about what they can or cannot do. Ethical issues always invite the most criticism but my experience is that it's rare for anyone to really give anything up for their ethics (this person likely has money saved up and will land on their feet but even this situation is more than most people would do).
- aleph_minus_one
Primary source: https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind