Technicians: Why are we building this?

Jack Poulson, a Google researcher, was recently alarmed by reports that the company was developing a search engine for China censoring content on behalf of the government.

Although Poulson is working on search technologies, he did not know the product, code-named Dragonfly. At a meeting last month with Jeff Dean, head of the company's artificial intelligence, Poulson asked if Google was considering advancing the product and whether its work would contribute to censorship and surveillance in China.

According to Poulson, Dean stated that Google had complied with the federal government's requests for surveillance and asked, rhetorically, whether the company should leave the US market in protest. Dean also shared a draft of an email from the company: "We will not and should not provide full transparency to every Googler, in order to meet our customer privacy commitments and give our teams products the freedom to innovate. "

The next day, Poulson left. Dean did not respond to a request for comment and Google declined to comment.

Across the technology sector, core employees are asking for more information on how their businesses are using the technologies they are developing. At Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, as well as in startups, engineers and technologists are increasingly asking if the products they are working on are used for surveillance in places like China or for military projects in the US or elsewhere.

This is a change from the past when Silicon Valley workers were generally developing products without much consideration of social costs. It's also a sign of how some technology companies, which have grown into serving consumers and businesses, are growing more in government work. And this change coincides with Silicon Valley's concerns about the policies of the Trump administration and the greater role of technology in government.

"You may think that you are building technology for one purpose, and then you discover that it is really crooked," said Laura Nolan, a senior computer engineer who resigned from Google in June following her participation to the Maven project, aimed at intelligence for the Ministry of Defense that could be used for drone strikes.

All of this has resulted in increasing tension between technical employees and managers. Workers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon signed petitions and protested to leaders against the use of some of the technologies they helped create. In small businesses, engineers started asking more questions about ethics.

And the change is likely to last: some engineering students said they were asking for more answers and asking similar questions, even before entering the job market.

"What people are looking for, not just employees, they are looking for clarity," said Frank Shaw, spokesman for Microsoft. "Are there principles that are applied? Even if you do not agree with the decision that is made, if you understand the thinking behind it, it helps a lot. "

Amazon has not responded to a request for comment.

Poulson, whose job was to incorporate a variety of languages ​​into the Google search, said that he initially did not think his research could be involved in Dragonfly – until he made himself available. that Chinese had been added to a list of languages ​​for his project.

"Most people do not know the overall scope of what they build," said Poulson, who had been working at Google for more than two years. "You do not know where he's going unless you're senior enough."

The difficulty of knowing what companies are doing with technology is compounded by the fact that engineers in large technology companies often build an infrastructure – such as algorithms, databases, and even hardware – that almost all products offered by a company. At Google, for example, a storage system called Colossus is used in searches, Google Maps and Gmail.

"It would be very difficult for most Google engineers to ensure that their work would not contribute in any way to these projects," said Nolan, who has contributed to the smooth operation of Google's systems.

Yet technology leaders have argued that complete transparency is not possible.

"Our company has always had confidential projects. I think what happened when the company was smaller, you're more likely to know, "Google CEO Sundar Pichai told a staff meeting in August, according to a transcript provided to the New York Times. "I think there are many times when people are in exploratory stages where teams are discussing and doing things, so sometimes being totally transparent at this point can cause problems."

Such policies have had repercussions beyond technology companies. In June, more than 100 students from Stanford, MIT and other large colleges announced that they would refuse hiring interviews with Google unless the company terminates its contract with Project Maven. (Google said this month that he would not renew the contract after it expires.)