Google's decision not to renew a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) contract with the Pentagon has reignited a debate about what Silicon Valley's role should be with regard to the military and war. Google, facing internal pressure, told employees during a meeting on Friday that it would not renew its contract with the Defense Department's flagship AI program, known as Project Maven, after it expires in 2019, according to multiple reports. The contract sparked a public relations crisis after a handful of employees reportedly resigned in protest and thousands of employees signed a letter urging the company's CEO not to allow Google to be drafted into the "business of war." Project Maven had recruited Google to help advance technology like surveillance drones, which are used to track the whereabouts of terrorist organizations and uncover devised plots before they unfold. Bob Work, a former deputy Defense secretary who established Project Maven in April 2017, told The Hill on Monday that he is still holding out hope that Google will reconsider.

Google's decision not to renew a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) contract with the Pentagon has reignited a debate about what Silicon Valley's …

One of the best parts of writing the Afternoon Edition each day is that I get to explore all kinds of interesting topics. Two of those recent topics continue to be all over the news, and they are the issues of robots and automation, and artificial intelligence and the "Singularity." These topics do materially affect markets, although their effect may not be as acute as, say, a monthly employment report. And speaking of which, we got a new monthly employment report this morning, as February saw 235,000 new non-farm payroll jobs created. That's good economic news; however, I wonder how many more jobs would have been created if there weren't as many advancements in the field of automation.

I attended the Intelligence Squared artificial intelligence debate at the 92nd St. Y's Seven Day of Genius Festival (March 9th) and felt like I had a seat at the edge of the world. For better or worse, this is arguably the central debate of the 21st century. The motion was "Don't Trust The Promise of AI?" Jaron Lanier and Andrew Keen took the position we shouldn't trust AI, while Martine Rothblatt and James Hughes argued we should. There were transhumanists on both sides of the debate, which made things interesting. For those unfamiliar, "transhumanism is an international and intellectual movement aiming to transform the human condition by developing and creating widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities."