Round 300 London-based members of Google’s AI-focused DeepMind workforce are in search of to unionize with the Communication Staff Union, in accordance with a Monetary Instances report that cites three individuals concerned with the unionization effort.
These DeepMind staff are reportedly sad about Google’s choice to take away a pledge to not use AI for weapons or surveillance from its web site. They’re additionally involved concerning the firm’s work with the Israeli army, together with a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract that has prompted protests elsewhere at Google.
One supply instructed the FT that workforce members really feel “duped,” and correspondence reportedly reveals that at the least 5 DeepMind workers members have give up citing these points. DeepMind has round 2,000 complete workers members in the UK.
A Google spokesperson instructed the FT that the corporate encourages “constructive and open dialogue with all of our staff.”
A small group of round 200 staff of Google and its dad or mum firm Alphabet beforehand introduced that they have been unionizing, although as a union representing only a tiny slice of the whole Google workforce, it lacked the flexibility to collectively cut price.