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Hundreds of Google and Amazon workers protested outside the company’s offices in San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Durham, NC on Thursday. .
Some Google and Amazon employees believe the deal will help Israel’s surveillance efforts against the Palestinians, Josh Marcen, a Google cloud engineer in Sunnyvale, told The Chronicle before the rally.
About 1,100 Google employees have signed a petition calling for the company to end its Nimbus contract, Marcin said. There is no way to participate without providing information to the Israeli government, which is oppressing the Palestinians, he said. “It’s relevant.
Google has denied that the contract will help intelligence services or strengthen the military, saying opponents are mischaracterizing Project Nimbus.
A Google spokesperson said in a statement: “This protest group may have its own views on Israel, but that does not affect our work on this contract.” “As we have stated many times, the contract is for workloads on our commercial platform with the Israeli government ministries such as finance, healthcare, transport and education. Today’s protest group is falsifying the contract – our work is not focused on military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services.
About 200 workers gathered outside the Google One Market Plaza offices near San Francisco’s Embarcadero, waving signs such as “No Tech for Israel Apartheid,” the latest example of tech worker activism.
There are also allegations that Google is retaliating against employees.
Google’s marketing manager Ariel Koren, who has been with the company for seven years and has been a vocal critic of Project Nimbus, resigned last week. Coren, a San Francisco resident, said the company gave her 17 working days to move to Sao Paulo, Brazil or be fired after she criticized Project Nimbus.
The New York Times reported that Google and the National Labor Relations Board investigated her complaint and found no wrongdoing by Google.
Project Nimbus’ response follows an uproar in 2018 with Google’s Project Maven teaming up with the US Department of Defense to analyze drone footage that employees feared could be used for terrorism. Thousands of workers signed petitions against the program and some left the company. The contract was reportedly not renewed.
That year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai released the company’s Artificial Intelligence Principles, which included a commitment not to design or deploy artificial intelligence on devices, “surveillance that violates internationally accepted norms,” and technology that violates established human rights laws and principles.
“While we are not developing AI for use in weapons, we want to make it clear that we continue to work with governments and militaries in many other areas, including cybersecurity, training, military recruiting, veterans health care, and search and rescue. “We are actively seeking additional ways to increase critical work and keep service members and civilians safe,” Pichai wrote at the time.
Over the past four years, Google employees have voiced their opposition to the company’s handling of sexual misconduct issues, labor practices and politics.
In the year In 2020, Google Cloud reportedly provided surveillance technology to Anduril Industries, a military technology company that the US government uses on the Mexican border. Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR, is co-founder of Anduril Industries.
Marxson, who has worked at Google for six years, said news of Andurill’s job prompted him to become more involved in activism at the company.
The company said it regretted the move away from open internal meetings where executives were open to questions. The staff had not received any internal response to the Project Nimbus controversy as of Wednesday, he said.
Marx feels that the ethical consideration for the company is now a pro-profit proposition, and the principles of artificial intelligence are applied too narrowly. For example, he said, customers can use Google’s technology in an abusive way, but that’s not adequately covered by the basics.
The employee unrest comes at a time of increasing challenges for Google and its parent Alphabet, which reported second-quarter revenue growth fell to 13% from 62% a year earlier as ad spending fell.
Pichai said at a conference call this week that he wants to make the company more efficient and more productive with fewer resources. Last month, the company’s hiring activity was slow.
Managers at Google Cloud, the same unit involved in Project Nimbus, reportedly said there will be “blood in the streets” if sales don’t improve, according to Insider.
Roland Lee is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf
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