Companies are relatively abstract entities, created by an amalgam of diverse individuals, and largely dedicated to making money along the lines of shareholder value. Throughout history, there have been many companies that, in one way or another, have put profits over ethics, from IBM's collaboration with Hitler's Germany, helping facilitate the holocaust, more recently, Volkswagen's systematic poisoning of the planet. The closest thing to corporate ethics is corporate social responsibility, which in too many cases has proved to be little more than a propaganda tool to justify a few worthy words in an annual report. In the absence of corporate ethics employees are increasingly speaking out against their company when they feel it has crossed the line: Google staff have spoken out against the Department of Defense's Maven Project, a lucrative image recognition contract that many other technology companies have chosen to keep quiet about. Opposition to Google's role in a project clearly designed to kill people began with some resignations, continued with a letter signed by thousands of employees, and ended with the non-renewal of the contract with the Department of Defense as well as the publication of a series of ethical principles that will supposedly guide the company's role in developing artificial intelligence.