By Debbie Gregory.

Congratulations to Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan. General Shanahan will lead its new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, or JAIC. He previously oversaw the Pentagon’s controversial artificial intelligence Project Maven. General Shanahan is currently the Director for Defense Intelligence for Warfighter Support. The new JAIC will coordinate artificial intelligence research across the Department, and with government labs and private companies. JAIC, at the end of the day will have a hand in everything the Pentagon does relating to Artificial Intelligence. Maven has been characterized as being the first serious attempt by the Defense Department to cut through bureaucracy and red tape to deliver AI tools quickly to warfighters.

Maven has been described by Pentagon officials as a “pathfinder”, a model for future artificial intelligence efforts. The project uses machine learning to derive useful intelligence from the vast troves of image data that the military collects, freeing up the analysts who manually scoured video footage, spy photos, and other data sources for relevant imagery. The goal was to have algorithms do the boring repetitive stuff — find the right truck, person, object of interest, in the data haystack — then alert the analyst to make decisions about targeting or other next steps.

The Pentagon described it as using “computer-vision algorithms … to help military and civilian analysts encumbered by the sheer volume of full-motion video data that DoD collects every day in support of counterinsurgency and counter terrorism operations.”

Defense officials have said that Maven was a huge success for the Department. But their private-sector partner on the project, Google, saw major public relations fallout from their involvement after their participation was revealed by Gizmodo. Under pressure from employees, Google officials announced they would not be renewing the contract with the Pentagon.

By Debbie Gregory.

The controversy around Google’s cooperation with the military, which has already cost them a dozen employees, may intensify in the coming months as Project Maven expands into new areas.  This is the first known mass resignations at Google in protest against one of the company’s business decisions.

Google’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to the controversial military pilot program will expand to include developing tools to more efficiently search captured hard drives.

Project Maven is formally known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team. The technology fielded under Maven can automatically annotate objects such as boats, trucks, and buildings on digital maps.

The use of artificial intelligence in drone warfare has some Google employees protesting the only way they feel would be effective- by resigning. About 4,000 other Google employees have sign a petition in protest, asking Google to immediately cancel the contract and refuse future military work.

Google claims it is only providing open-source software to Project Maven, which means the military would be able to still use the technology, even if Google didn’t accept payment or offer technical assistance.

Google has long been known as one of the coolest companies to work for, with an open culture that encourages employees to challenge and debate product decisions.

Word of the controversial project began to spread internally three months ago. Employees felt that the ethical concerns regarding the project should have been addressed before the contract was signed.

Last month, the Tech Workers Coalition launched a petition of their own, demanding that Google abandon its work on Maven and that other major tech companies, including IBM and Amazon, refuse to work with the U.S. Defense Department.