SAN FRANCISCO – Google workers Friday got word that the internet titan will retreat from a deal to help the U.S. military use artificial intelligence to analyze drone video, according to reports. The collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense was said to have sparked rebellion inside the California-based company. An internal petition calling for Google to stay out of "the business of war" garnered thousands of signatures, and some workers reportedly quit to protest a collaboration with the military. The New York Times and the tech news website Gizmodo cited unnamed sources as saying a Google's cloud team executive told employees on Friday that the company will not seek to renew the controversial contract after it expires next year. The contract was reported to be worth less than $10 million to Google but was thought to have potential to lead to more lucrative technology collaborations with the military.

Various companies collaborate for better future, and International Association of Community Drone Pilots (IACDP) is partnering with a drone pilot community, DroneUp to launch the Responsible Community Pilot program. The RCP program focuses on engaging drone pilots through training, certification, idea-sharing and community. The program will also cover online courses and exams, standard of conduct and detailed safety guidelines. "Our efforts to build this community through training and a sense of purpose are having dramatic positive effects on ensuring air safety," says Tom Walker, CEO and founder of DroneUp. "IACDP is motivated by a desire to make a positive impact on the industry," says John Evans, President of IACDP.

Alphabet Inc's Google will not renew a contract to help the U.S. military analyse aerial drone imagery when it expires in March, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, as the company moves to defuse internal uproar over the deal. The defence programme, called Project Maven, set off a revolt inside Google, as factions of employees opposed Google technology being used in warfare. The dissidents said it clashed with the company's stated principle of doing no harm and cited risks around using a nascent artificial intelligence technology in lethal situations. Google plans to honour what is left of its contract on Project Maven, the person said. More than 4,600 employees signed a petition calling for Google to cancel the deal, with at least 13 employees resigning in recent weeks in protest at Google's involvement, according to a second person familiar with the deal.

Google is ending its controversial'Project Maven' deal with the Pentagon. Google Cloud boss Diane Greene informed employees of the decision during an internal meeting on Friday morning, Gizmodo reported, citing sources close to the situation. The contract, in which the Pentagon used Google's artificial intelligence technologies to analyze drone footage, was set to expire in 2019. Greene told employees that it won't be renewing the contract once it expires. Google is calling off its controversial'Project Maven' program with the Pentagon.

Google will not seek to extend its contract next year with the Department of Defense for artificial intelligence used to analyze drone video, squashing a controversial alliance that had raised alarms over the technological build-up between Silicon Valley and the military. The tech giant will stop working on its piece of the military's AI project known as Project Maven when its 18-month contract expires in March, a source familiar with Google's thinking told The Washington Post. Diane Greene, the chief executive of Google's influential cloud-computing business, told employees of the decision at an internal meeting Friday first reported by Gizmodo. Google, which declined to comment, has faced widespread public backlash and employee resignations for helping develop technological tools that could aid in warfighting. The source said Google would soon release new company principles related to the ethical uses of AI.

While leaked memos show that Google execs perceived a real risk of internal backlash from their $9 million Pentagon contract to supply AI for US military drones, they were willing to risk it because they expected the business to quickly grow to $250,000,000. The September email chain discussing the recently inked deal included Scott Frohman and Aileen Black, two members of Google's defense sales team, along with Dr. Fei-Fei Li, the head scientist at Google Cloud, as well as members of the communications team. Black provided a summary of the Project Maven deal, which she described as a "5-month long race among AI heavyweights" in the tech industry. "Total deal $25-$30M, $15M to Google over the next 18 months," she wrote. "As the program grows expect spend is budgeted at 250 M per year. This program is directly related to the Sept 13 memo about moving DOD aggressively to the cloud I sent last week."

President Donald Trump signed a directive in 2017 to establish the'innovation zones' that allow exemptions to some drone regulations, such as flying over people, nighttime flights and flights where the aircraft can't be seen by the operator. States, communities and tribes selected to participate would devise their own trial programs in partnership with government and industry drone users. 'Data gathered from these pilot projects will form the basis of a new regulatory framework to safely integrate drones into our national airspace,' US Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao said in a statement. Ms Chao, who called the rapidly developing drone industry the biggest development since the jet age, said about 150 applications were received. Ten sites have been included in a the Federal Aviation Administration's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program.

The internal Google email chain also notes that several big tech players competed to win the Project Maven contract. Other tech firms such as Amazon were in the running, one Google executive involved in negotiations wrote. Rather than serving solely as a minor experiment for the military, Google executives on the thread stated that Project Maven was "directly related" to a major cloud computing contract worth billions of dollars that other Silicon Valley firms are competing to win. The emails further note that Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing arm of Amazon, "has some work loads" related to Project Maven. Jane Hynes, a spokesperson for Google Cloud, emailed The Intercept to say that the company stands by the statement given to the New York Times this week that "the new artificial intelligence principles under development precluded the use of A.I. in weaponry."

China's drone-killing lasers have successfully destroyed an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from 1,000 feet (300 metres) away. The feat was demonstrated at a recent arms conference in Kazakhstan and comes amid growing tensions with the US. Sources say the portable laser weapon can intercept low-altitude drones and could also gun down moving targets and naval vessels. However, details about exactly how it works have yet to be revealed. China's drone-killing lasers have successfully intercepted an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from 1,000 feet (300 metres) away.

Google's Project Maven program for AI-based military drone image recognition program could net the company up to $250 million per year, according to internal memos seen by The Intercept. That's a lot more than the $9 million Google reportedly told employees the contract was worth. What's more, the program may be tied to a much bigger contract, possibly the US military's JEDI Cloud program. The information came from an email chain between Google Cloud head scientist Dr. Fei-Fei Li and other employees. "Total deal $25-$30M, $15M to Google over the next 18 months," Li wrote.