Google DeepMind researcher resigns over company’s Pentagon deal, shares 2000-plus words long note explaining ‘Here’s what happened’; says: I resigned from Google DeepMind because it broke…

A Google DeepMind researcher has quit over the company’s decision to sell its AI to the Pentagon, and he’s not going quietly. Alex Turner, who spent more than two years on AI safety at DeepMind, resigned in June and this week published a 2,000-plus word account titled “Why I Left Google DeepMind,” laying out months of internal lobbying that ultimately failed. “I resigned from Google DeepMind because it broke its founding promise by selling AI to the military without restrictions against killer robots or mass spying,” Turner wrote on X, where the thread has since crossed 750,000 views. His central complaint is simple: Google signed a classified deal letting the Pentagon use its Gemini AI for “any lawful government purpose,” with no binding limits on autonomous weapons or surveillance.

Google DeepMind’s 2014 military promise, broken by the Pentagon AI deal