Cybersecurity
Pentagon Drone Program Is Using Google AI
- Google executives advise Defense Department on cloud, AI tech
- Defense Secretary Mattis visited Google HQ in August
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia outside Washington, D.C.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
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Google’s artificial intelligence technology is being used by the U.S. Department of Defense to analyze drone footage, a rare and controversial move by a company that’s actively limited its work with the military in the past.
A Google spokeswoman said the company provides its TensorFlow application programming interfaces, or APIs, to a pilot project with the Department of Defense to help automatically identify objects in unclassified data. APIs are software-based rules that let computer programs communicate. TensorFlow is a popular set of APIs and other tools for AI capabilities such as machine learning and computer vision.