Google is committing to not using artificial intelligence for weapons or surveillance after employees protested the company's involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to analyse drone footage. However, Google says it will continue to work with the United States military on cybersecurity, search and rescue, and other non-offensive projects. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the change in a set of AI principles released today. The principles are intended to govern Google's use of artificial intelligence and are a response to employee pressure on the company to create guidelines for its use of AI. Employees at the company have spent months protesting Google's involvement in Project Maven, sending a letter to Pichai demanding that Google terminate its contract with the Department of Defense.

Yes, it will let people know a robot is calling. At its I/O conference Tuesday, Google showed off Duplex, a new feature of the Google Assistant smartphone that will use a human-sounding robot to set up appointments at hair salons and restaurants. In the demo, the robot wasn't identified as such, and sounded totally human, to the point of adding "ums" and "ands" into the conversation. More: Should Google let businesses know their human-sounding robot is calling? This led to many critics saying that Duplex would be taking advantage of people by not informing them they were speaking to a robot.