Workers at Google's UK-based DeepMind have voted to unionize. According to The Guardian, they are sending a letter to company management seeking recognition for the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as their representatives. The decision to unionize, made in April, was primarily driven by reports of Google's impending deal with the US Defense Department. Employees reportedly cited the US government's "capricious Iran war" and its dispute with Anthropic as evidence that the department was "not a responsible partner."
The Pentagon recently announced agreements with several leading AI companies, including Google, allowing the Defense Department to use their AI technologies for "any lawful use." While reports from The Information suggest these deals restrict the government from using the technologies for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons projects "without appropriate human oversight and control," Google and the other companies reportedly lack "any right to control or veto" the government's decisions on how and where their AI tech is deployed.
Google Gemini and other AI technologies, developed by its unified AI team which includes DeepMind workers, were part of these agreements. Some employees who spoke to The Guardian also voiced concerns that the technology they developed was being used to assist the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Google reportedly worked with the IDF to expand its access to the company's AI tools and had previously entered into a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government in 2021.
According to The Guardian, the workers aim to organize and pressure Google to commit to not developing technology "whose primary purpose is to cause harm or injury to people." They also seek the establishment of an independent ethics oversight body within the company and the right for employees to refuse to contribute to specific projects on moral grounds.