General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has criticized tech giant Google for cooperating with China on artificial intelligence development. Dunford added that Google is facilitating Chinese access to technology that may put US forces at a disadvantage.
Shelly Banjo and Mark Bergen reported on the Pentagon-Google tiff for Bloomberg News:
Huawei Technologies Co. built Track AI using TensorFlow, a set of AI software tools from Alphabet Inc.’s Google. TensorFlow is also open-source, so anyone, anywhere can use it and Google can’t control access.
However, a creative team that works with Google’s advertising clients also provided marketing help to Huawei, according to Google spokesman Chris Brummitt. These teams regularly work with Google clients to “make the most of what’s possible with technology, leading to ideas like this one,” Brummitt added, while stressing that no Google engineers worked on the project. A Huawei spokesman confirmed the partnership.
The Track AI initiative is not a major strategic priority for either of the technology giants but it does underscore the important business relationships that Google has been trying to build with Chinese companies like Huawei for decades.
Artificial intelligence is a major investment area for both companies, and health-care diagnostics is one of the ripest fields for image-recognition software. Yet the collaboration happened during a particularly fraught moment. Huawei is a pariah for the Trump Administration amid concerns it could pose a threat to national security and be a vehicle for Beijing’s spying, allegations the company has consistently denied. Google’s AI efforts in China are the subject of scathing criticism from the U.S. military.
