Google, China, and Artificial Intelligence: Deep Moral Pitfalls Lurk There

Google recently announced it would be pulling out of a high profile DARPA Artificial Intelligence (AI) program called MAVEN citing ethics concerns and a petition from 4,000 of its employees. This decision came just before The Economist ran a cover story detailing the Chinese government's brutal oppression of the Uyghur population in the Zinjang province of western China. Uyghurs are a Muslim Turkic minority, ethnically and religiously distinct from the ruling Han Chinese. The Chinese government has turned the province into a technologically enabled police state, with invasive monitoring of all forms of communication, biometric identity controls, and novel applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence. In December, Google announced it would be opening a new AI research center in China, expanding its existing presence in the country.