Overview
- DeepMind employees in the UK, who voted 98% in favor within the CWU, sent a letter Tuesday requesting Google recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite to represent at least 1,000 London-linked staff.
- The letter gives Google 10 working days to grant recognition or enter mediated talks before organizers move to legal recognition and consider actions such as protests or research strikes.
- The campaign follows Friday’s Pentagon confirmation of deals that let Google run its models on classified networks for any lawful purpose, which workers warn could enable autonomous weapons or mass surveillance.
- Organizers demand an end to the use of Google AI by the US and Israeli militaries, the reinstatement of a public pledge not to develop AI weapons or surveillance tools, independent ethics oversight, and a right to refuse work on moral grounds.
- Google has defended work with defense departments as supporting national security, as other major AI firms signed similar classified-use agreements while Anthropic refused and was labeled a supply-chain risk.