PBS高端访谈:迫于员工压力 谷歌取消军事合同

（单词翻译）

Hari Sreenivasan: Artificial intelligence, drones, warfare¹, and Google. It's a mixture that caused an uproar² inside the tech giant where the early motto was don't be evil. So what's behind Google's contract with the Department of Defense³ for a project called Maven? Joining me now from Oakland is Gizmodo reporter Kate Conger who has been covering the story. Kate, so what was the extent of what google was planning to do and work with on this project Maven?

Kate Conger: So Google's role in this project has been to create artificial intelligence to do image classification on the footage collected by drones, and so they were trying to help the Department of Defense mark objects in this footage to say this car is a car, this building is a building, this is a person.

Hari Sreenivasan: Okay. And the employees at google had a problem with this for the past several weeks, but how did they protest it? What was their concern? So there are a couple of different concerns within the employees. Some employees at google feel like the company shouldn't be involved with the military at all. There are other employees that feel that using artificial intelligence in this context is particularly risky⁴. They foresee a future where eventually you have a computer making the decision of whether or not to carry out a drone strike, and they feel like a human should be the one who is making that decision, not a computer. And so there's been a few things they have done to push back and protest. There was an open letter they sent around the company asking google to cancel the contract and obviously they have been speaking to the press about some of their objections as well.

Hari Sreenivasan: Have google executives been thinking about this? You have obtained some e-mails, what was the chatter⁵ among the C suite⁶? The executive conversation was really interesting. When they first took on this project, there were a lot of conversation about the concern of how the public would perceive this, and particularly in the use of A.I. in a military context. There is a lot of conversation back and forth⁷ of, you know, how are we going to shape public perception about this? How is this going to reflect on our image? But there wasn't as much conversation about the actual ethics⁸ of this kind of decision and that ethical⁹ conversation is the one that employees have really been pushing for.

Hari Sreenivasan: And how big of a part of Google's revenue or how significant a line of business is this to google?

Kate Conger: So the Maven contract itself is not particularly significant for google. I believe the earliest numbers they had was around 15 million, and for google that is not very much money at all. But the idea was that this would sort of be a foot in the door for them with future military contracts and could put them into the running for much, much larger contracts down the road.

Hari Sreenivasan: If google doesn't do this, will other or are other companies lobbying for these contracts?

Kate Conger: Yes. So the Maven contract was a competition between a couple of other major cloud providers and it is entirely¹⁰ likely that one of those other companies will step up and fill google's shoes once their contract expires in 2019.

Hari Srinivasan: So google decided¹¹ they are not going to renew this in 2019, meaning they are still continuing to work on this project. Are there ripple¹² effects going forward for some of the employees that are still concerned and inside google today?

Kate Conger: I believe so. I think that the employee push back on this will continue, employees have said from the beginning they want the contract to be canceled and that is not what has happened so far. Google says they will finish out the contract. And so I expect the employees will probably continue to push back on Google's involvement in this.

Hari Srinivasan: Is there a larger conversation that is happening among tech companies about how they should be working with or not working with the U.S. government?

Kate Conger: I think so. You know, there has been a lot of reckoning throughout the tech industry over the last year or so where employees are kind of wondering about how the products that they create are being used. You know, you see this at Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytical¹³ scandal, I think you see this with Twitter a little bit with some of the trolling and harassment¹⁴ that's gone on there, and of course with google in this military contract there is a lot of questioning about, you know, what are we are creating here, is it fundamentally going to be used for good or is it not?

Hari Sreenivasan: All right, Kate Conger of Gizmodo, joining us from Oakland, thank you so much.

Kate Conger: Thank you.

哈里·斯雷尼瓦桑：人工智能，无人机，战争，和谷歌。它们互为交织，引起了技术巨头们内部的躁动，而他们早期的座右铭是“不为邪恶。”谷歌与国防部签订了名为Maven的项目合同，那么合同背后隐藏着哪些内容？来自奥克兰的Gizmodo网站记者凯特·康格做客节目，并为我们带来报道。凯特，谷歌在Maven这个项目上的计划和执行到了怎样的程度？

凯特·康格：那么，一直以来，谷歌在这个项目中所做的工作就是，创立人工智能，对无人机收集到的足迹画面进行分类，因此他们尝试帮助国防部标记这些足迹上的物体，说这辆车是一辆车，这个建筑是一个建筑，这是一个人。

哈里·斯雷尼瓦桑：好的。在过去的几周中，谷歌的员工们对此存有疑虑，但他们是如何进行抗议的呢？他们关心的是什么呢？那么，员工们反映了几个不同的问题。

一些谷歌员工认为公司压根不应该涉足军事领域。还有的员工认为，将人工智能应用在这方面尤其危险。他们预见未来会出现这样的场景：最终你的计算机会决定无人机是否出动打击，他们认为这种决定应该由人来做，而非一台计算机。那么，他们做了一些事情，进行抵制和抗议。他们写了一封公开信，在公司内部流传，要求谷歌取消合同，显然他们也已向媒体表明了一些他们的反对意见。

哈里·斯雷尼瓦桑：一直以来，谷歌的高管们有没有对这个进行思考？你已经收到了一些电子邮件，C组在抱怨什么？高管间的谈话非常有趣。当首次接到这个项目时，他们就公众如何看待这一问题进行了很多讨论，尤其是在军事背景下使用人工智能。来来回回进行了很多谈话，你知道，我们将如何塑造公众对此的看法？这将如何反映我们的形象？但是关于这类决定的实际伦理并没有太多的讨论，而道德对话才是员工们真正想要的。

哈里·斯雷尼瓦桑：那么这个项目为谷歌带来多大收入？多大的业务量？

凯特·康格：那么，Maven合同本身对谷歌来说并不特别重要。我相信他们最早的数字是1,500万左右，这对于谷歌来说，根本不是什么钱。但他们的想法是，这将是他们未来拿到军事合同的第一步，可以让他们在未来争取到更多更大的合同。

哈里·斯雷尼瓦桑：如果谷歌不这么做，其他人或其他公司会游说当权者批准这些合同吗？

凯特·康格：是的。因此，Maven合同在几个主要的云供应商之间展开了竞争，而一旦谷歌的合同在2019年到期，其他公司就会加紧填补空缺。

哈里·斯雷尼瓦桑：所以谷歌决定2019年合同到期后，暂不对此进行改变，这意味着它们将继续这一项目。对于谷歌内部关心此事的员工们来说，未来是否存在涟漪效应？

凯特·康格：我相信是这样的。我认为，员工抵制此项目的努力会继续下去，员工们从一开始就说他们希望取消合同，而目前合同尚未取消。谷歌表示，他们将履行合同，直到合同结束。因此，我预计员工们可能会继续采取行动抵制谷歌参与此事。

哈里·斯雷尼瓦桑：科技公司之间是否展开了更多对话，来讨论他们是否应与美国政府合作，以及如何合作？

凯特·康格：我想是的。你知道，在过去一年左右的时间里，整个科技行业经过了大量的反思，他们一直在琢磨，人们是如何使用他们所造出的产品的。你知道，在剑桥分析丑闻之后，你在脸谱网上看到了此事，我想你可以在推特上看到一些浏览搜索以及纷扰担忧。当然，谷歌在这份军事合同中存在很多疑问，你知道，我们在这里创造着什么，从根本上来讲，它是向善还是向恶？

哈里·斯雷尼瓦桑：好的，发明记者凯特·康格，从奥克兰加入我们，非常感谢你。

凯特·康格：谢谢你。