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If you don’t like Google’s AI principles… well, it has othersIf you don’t like Google’s AI principles… well, it has others
US Internet giant Google has updated its AI principles to remove vows not to allow it to be used for weapons.
Scott Bicheno
February 5, 2025
3 Min Read
Google didn’t highlight this change in a recent blog post about ‘Responsible AI’, written by the co-Founder of Google DeepMind and its SVP of Research, Labs, Technology & Society, but plenty of media spotted it anyway. “Since we first published our AI Principles in 2018, the technology has evolved rapidly,” opens the section of the blog headed ‘Updating AI Principles’.
That 2018 publication was in apparent response to an employee revolt about something called Project Maven, which was a US defence initiative that used AI to identify military targets. The original document had a section headed ‘AI applications we will not pursue’, which covered the following:
Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.
Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.
Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.
Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.
Six years is a long time in geopolitics and things have evolved so rapidly that the entire section, which was still in place as recently as last week, is now apparently obsolete. Instead, the updated principles focus on the following:
Bold Innovation: We develop AI to assist, empower, and inspire people in almost every field of human endeavor, drive economic progress and improve lives, enable scientific breakthroughs, and help address humanity's biggest challenges.
Responsible Development and Deployment: Because we understand that AI, as a still-emerging transformative technology, poses new complexities and risks, we consider it an imperative to pursue AI responsibly throughout the development and deployment lifecycle — from design to testing to deployment to iteration — learning as AI advances and uses evolve.
Collaborative Progress, Together: We learn from others, and build technology that empowers others to harness AI positively.
Meanwhile the European Commission has published a typically lengthy tome of AI guidelines, which will govern the use of AI across the EU. There doesn’t seem to a specific prohibition of use in weapons in its 135 pages, but the word ‘harm’ crops up 233 times. “These guidelines provide an overview of AI practices that are deemed unacceptable due to their potential risks to European values and fundamental rights,” explains the publication. Just an overview?
Google has a long history of committing itself to malleable virtue-signalling platitudes and its 2018 vows always seemed unlikely to stand the test of time. This tweak coincides with a significant escalation in the AI arms race following the revelation of China’s rapid progress in the field. Google presumably doesn’t want to miss out on the zillions of dollars of taxpayer money destined to be thrown at the matter.
As Groucho Marx (pictured) is famously quoted as saying “Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.” It’s arguably impossible for companies to have any principles at all, other than the pursuit of their own interests, and it’s an insult to our intelligence when they claim otherwise. While this is a relatively obscure tweak by one company, it calls into question all other statements of AI principles and bodes ill for the future direction of AI in general
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