Google DeepMind workers in UK vote to unionize amid deal with US military | US news

Workers developing Google’s artificial intelligence products in the United Kingdom have voted to unionize, in part due to concerns about a deal between the company and the U.S. military announced last week.

In a letter scheduled to be presented to management on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, employees of Google DeepMind, the company’s AI research laboratory, demanded that the Communications Workers Union and Unite the Union be recognized as joint representatives of the lab’s UK-based staff.

DeepMind’s UK workers voted to unionize in April. One employee said they were particularly galvanized by reports that Google was close to reaching a deal with the defense department, citing the US’s “capricious Iran war” and the Trump administration’s feud with Anthropic as indicators that the department “is not a responsible partner.” The deal was finally announced on Friday.

“I joined the union because of my concerns that artificial intelligence is being used to reinforce authoritarianism, both militarily and through domestic and foreign surveillance practices,” added the worker, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “By unionizing, we are following the traditional path for workers to organize and have a say.”

Another worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said many at the company were struggling with what they saw as complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza. The Washington Post noted that the company has provided the Israeli army with greater access to artificial intelligence tools since the early days of the war in Gaza. reported Last year and in 2021, it signed a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, along with Amazon.

“Our technology helped the IDF,” the second British worker said, referring to the Israeli army. “I want AI to benefit humanity, not facilitate a genocide.”

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Concerns among Google employees and investors have been growing for years, but were particularly heightened last year after the company backed off its pledge not to develop militarized artificial intelligence. The two said this development was a driving motivation for the Google DeepMind workers union in the United Kingdom. While small groups of Google employees have previously unionized in the US, UK employees were the first to seek union recognition at a “frontier” AI lab, they said. Google DeepMind is headquartered in London but has about a dozen offices in North America and Europe. According to union officials, at least 1,000 workers would be represented if the company recognizes the union.

On Friday, the Pentagon confirmed it had reached agreements with seven leading artificial intelligence companies, including Google. Others included SpaceX, OpenAI, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. It was noteworthy that Anthropic, whose technology is widely used by the US military but has been arguing with the Pentagon about future contracts, was not included in the group.

“These agreements will accelerate the transformation to establish the U.S. military as an AI-first fighting force and strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority in all domains of warfare,” Defense Department officials said in a statement.

The Trump administration has forced AI companies to make their tools available on private networks without the standard restrictions they impose on users. Google’s contract with the Pentagon reportedly includes the following statement: “The Parties acknowledge that the Artificial Intelligence System is not intended for, and should not be used for, domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons (including target selection) without appropriate human oversight and control.” But this language is not binding, and the agreement also states that Google does not have the right to control or veto the government’s “legal” operational decision-making.

Workers who voted to join the union said they did so to increase pressure on Google to meet demands already done It included requiring other employees at the company to commit not to develop technology whose “primary purpose is to harm or injure people,” establishing an independent ethical oversight body, and giving workers the right to refuse to contribute to projects on moral grounds. They said that if the company refuses, they will consider protests and “research strikes” in which staff will stay away from work to avoid detection by significantly improving core products such as Google’s artificial intelligence bot Gemini and continuing to make less important updates.

Workers at Google are increasingly vocal about their opposition to militarized applications of their technology. Last week, amid reports of a pending deal, more than 600 Google employees signed a contract. open letter He implored CEO Sundar Pichai not to put the company’s artificial intelligence systems to secret use.

“We want to see AI benefit humanity, not see it used in inhumane or deeply harmful ways,” they wrote. “Making the wrong decision now will cause irreparable damage to Google’s reputation, its business, and its role in the world.”

Technology workers are increasingly challenging management over the use of the technology they helped develop. In 2024, Google fired 50 workers who protested the Nimbus Project signed with the Israeli government in 2021. Workers at Microsoft, which the Guardian reported provided Israel with cloud storage used in mass surveillance of Palestinians, occupied a company campus with banners reading “No Labor for Genocide”. (The company terminated the Israeli army’s access to this technology after the Guardian’s report.)

Investors also expressed concerns. A coalition of shareholders who own approximately $2.2 billion worth of Alphabet shares wrote: letter Last week, Google’s parent company held a meeting demanding more transparency around Google Cloud and AI deployments in “high-risk” contexts. They expressed concern about the company’s provision of services to US immigration authorities and Project Nimbus, and raised questions about “the effectiveness of policy guardrails, internal upgrade processes, and Board oversight of AI deployments in conflict-affected or security-sensitive environments.”

Google also dealt with widespread employee protests in 2018 over a military contract known as Project Maven, under which the company agreed to produce artificial intelligence products for the Pentagon’s analysis of drone imagery. In response to the backlash, the company did not renew the contract in 2019 and issued a set of principles for its work on artificial intelligence, which included a now-removed pledge not to design artificial intelligence for weapons. Palantir took over the Maven Project, which continues today.