Several employees of the American technology giant Google have resigned, or are preparing to leave, its artificial intelligence division, Google DeepMind. They say they are troubled by the company’s deepening involvement in military operations, particularly in the United States and Israel.
The workers, who spoke to the BBC, said they feared Google’s AI technology could be used in warfare without enough human supervision. This, they said, raises questions about the safety and ethical implications of deploying fast-evolving systems in military settings.
One of them, London-based research engineer Sofia Liguori, resigned from Google DeepMind this week after three years with the company.
She said Google’s growing involvement in military AI projects clashed with her personal values.
“Realising my company is pushing more and more for AI systems in military operations makes me feel ashamed to work at Google,” Liguori said, speaking in a personal capacity.
A Google spokesperson defended the company’s approach, saying it has procedures to make sure its partnerships meet established standards.
“We work with public sector organisations worldwide and follow a consistent process for reviewing and entering these contracts, including compliance with our acceptable use policies and AI principles.”
The spokesperson added, “We also have dedicated channels for employees to safely raise any concerns – ranging from business ethics to misconduct – and have strict workplace policies in place to prevent retaliation of any kind.”
Google is one of several technology companies that signed agreements with the US military earlier this year to deploy artificial intelligence across classified military environments.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has made integrating AI into the armed forces a priority. He has declared that the Trump administration would build an “AI-first warfighting force”.
Critics, however, argue that the rapid pace of AI development raises serious doubts about its reliability in combat, particularly where decisions could determine whether people live or die.
Liguori said Google’s expanding military partnerships, including those with the US and Israeli militaries, eventually made her lose confidence in the company’s commitment to its ethical principles.
“I don’t agree with this direction and this has led me to lose faith in my company being true to its stated ethical values,” she said.
Google’s AI Principles stress human supervision and adherence to international law and human rights.
Current and former employees, along with experts interviewed by the BBC, questioned whether the company could guarantee meaningful human oversight when its technology is used for critical military decisions.
Another former Google DeepMind employee, AI researcher Andreas Kirsch, resigned earlier this month over similar concerns.
He questioned whether the company’s governance arrangements were adequate to ensure the responsible deployment of AI in sensitive military settings.
“Google’s governance and oversight are not sufficient or meaningful enough to deploy AI safely and responsibly in military and classified settings” or “to develop artificial superintelligence safely in the future,” Kirsch said.
He also doubted the company’s ability to monitor how the US military uses its technology.
“Google seems to have no right to control or veto how the Pentagon uses its AI and also seems to have limited visibility into how it’s being deployed,” he added.
One of the most prominent examples of AI use by the US military is Maven Smart Systems, a platform developed by the defence technology company Palantir to organise intelligence and military data.
The system uses AI to help military personnel identify and select potential targets, speeding up some stages of military operations.
Retired Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, a former director of Project Maven, voiced concern about how quickly the military was adopting the technology.
The “philosophy” seems to be: “Go as fast as possible to deploy [AI technology] as widely as possible, potentially at the expense of the rigour and discipline of test and evaluation.”
The Pentagon, however, maintains that adopting AI is necessary to strengthen its military capabilities.
Emil Michael, an under secretary at the US Department of Defense, said earlier this year, “Speed defines victory in the AI era.”
Under Google’s agreement with the Pentagon, signed earlier this year, its AI systems can be used for “any lawful government purpose”.
The agreement also states that the technology “should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons (including target selection) without appropriate human oversight and control”.
Other companies that signed similar agreements include OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Oracle, Nvidia and the AI start-up Reflection.
Their technology can be deployed across military activities, including transport, planning and battlefield operations.
Sarah Shoker, a former head of OpenAI’s Geopolitics team, warned that the speed of AI systems could undermine meaningful human supervision in combat.
“AI compresses the time an operator has to make a decision because it works much faster than a person, and that’s especially risky in a high-stress environment,” she said.
“When you have hundreds of targets that are selected by AI and a short amount of time, it is almost impossible for a human operator to meaningfully review the AI’s outputs for errors.”
Meanwhile, some Google employees said they feared professional consequences if they publicly criticised the company’s military partnerships.
Liguori claimed that restrictions in employment contracts discourage workers from speaking openly about their concerns.
“In principle I’m not allowed to criticise Google for the duration of my life,” she told the BBC.
She said she chose to speak out because she believed the public needed to understand what was happening inside the company.
Liguori added that at Google “people are scared of retaliation and putting their career at risk. You feel you are being watched, you can’t speak.”
A current Google DeepMind employee, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, warned that the company’s changing direction could drive away workers who joined because of its original mission.
The employee said “a lot of motivated employees who signed up for [the company’s] original mission could leave – but there’s also a pipeline of people at the start of the careers who could fill those positions. It could be a changing of the guard.”
Another employee, who also declined to be identified, said several colleagues had already left over concerns about the company’s ethical direction.
“A lot of people have left the company that feel strongly about this [how Google DeepMind has changed its ethics position],” the employee said.
“Some people are putting up a fight, others are thinking: ‘it’s a big company. What do you expect to change?'”
Google has also faced internal criticism over its involvement in Israeli government technology projects.
In 2024, employees protested against Project Nimbus, a $1.2bn joint contract with Amazon to provide Israel’s government and military with AI technology and cloud computing infrastructure.
At the time, Google maintained that Project Nimbus “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services”.
Israel’s use of AI in warfare has also come under scrutiny following the release of a documentary titled Naza. The film examines claims about AI-powered targeting systems used in bombardments in the Gaza Strip and their alleged contribution to high civilian casualties.
An Israeli government minister has rejected the claims in the film, describing them as false and distorted.
Kirsch maintained that existing AI systems were not reliable enough for battlefield deployment, warning that their limitations could have serious consequences in military operations.
“Current AI models are not robust enough, and I don’t think they have been trained for such tasks either,” he said.
The documentary title appears as “Naza” in the report, which may be a typo, so please confirm it against the original.
