The Google CEO says that he may never launch the censored search engine that he designed for China

CEO Sundar Pichai said Monday that Google was experimenting with a censored search engine that would work in China, but it is unclear when it will launch this service someday.

Pichai, speaking at the Wired25 conference at SFJazz Center in San Francisco, said Google had launched the internal project – dubbed Project Dragonfly – aimed at seeing what it was possible to do in China, the country subject to censorship laws as strict as many US companies, including Google. , do not operate their services there.

The company was surprised by information about Project Dragonfly, its construction project of a censored search engine for China, eight years after his retirement from the country. At the time of departure, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who grew up in the Soviet Union, cited the "totalitarianism" of Chinese politics.

The new research project has also attracted criticism from Google's workforce. A handful of employees reportedly abandoned the initiative. And about 1,000 employees signed an open letter asking the company to be transparent about the project and to create an ethical review process that includes core employees, not just senior executives.

Google did not talk much about the project. However, last month, Keith Enright, Google's Privacy Officer, confirmed at a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee that there was a Dragonfly project, but it did not work. Did not want to say more.

Monday's remarks are Pichai's first public recognition that Google is working on such a project.

Pichai pointed out that Google "constantly balances its values ​​of providing users with access to information, freedom of expression, privacy of users, but we also respect the rule of law of each country ". China has been a particular challenge, he said.

"That's the reason we did the internal project," he said. "We wanted to know what Google would look like if Google was in China."

After building the project internally, Google discovered that it would be "able to sell more than 99 percent of queries," Pichai said. "There are so many areas in which we would be able to provide better information than available."

But he said Google wanted to "balance the conditions." It would be very early.We do not know whether we could do it in China, but we felt it was important for us to explore. .. the importance of the market and the number of users. "

Pichai's interview on Wired25 comes as Google, who turned 20 last month, faces some of the biggest challenges in his history.

Google and Pichai have recently undergone a thorough review, particularly of Washington. Last month, Facebook operations director Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey testified in the Senate about election security, misinformation and perceived biases in corporate algorithms. Larry Page, CEO of Google's parent company, Alphabet, and Pichai, Google's CEO, were invited, but declined the invitation, angering lawmakers.

Pichai is expected to give his own testimony before Congress next month after the mid-term elections.

Google has also been accused of political bias. In August, President Donald Trump accused Google of political bias and liberal tendency. He tweeted that Google's search results are "RIGGED", claiming that the company "suppresses conservative voices". He also has tweeted a video claiming that Google had promoted speeches on the state of the Union of former President Barack Obama every January but not his Trump added the hashtag #StopTheBias.

Google rejected the president's request, saying his home page had promoted Trump's speech in January. The company also explained that it had neither promoted the address of Trump nor that of Obama in their early years in power, as these speeches are not technically considered as addresses of the state of the Union. A screenshot taken from the Internet Archive, which keeps a record of what appears on Web domains, backs up Google's explanations.

Work with the Department of Defense

Another controversy concerns Google's decision taken earlier this month by Google to withdraw from the Pentagon contract for a $ 10 billion deal after the protests of its employees. Google said the project could conflict with its principles of ethical use of AI.

Pichai said Monday that Google plans to continue working with the Ministry of Defense, but not with regard to the use of artificial intelligence for autonomous weapons. He pointed out that Google employees were not the only ones to worry about the use.

"If you're talking about experienced researchers working in the field, they worry that so soon with powerful technology, how do you do it thoughtfully?" Said Pichai.

"Once we started working on AI, we realized it was different from the other things we had worked on," Pichai added. "We are committed to applying a set of principles regarding AI – we have somehow stated our goals as to how to do it … and goals that we would not pursue. is very, very seriously. "

He said that although Google is a much bigger company than it was 20 years ago, it retains the same values. But because it has many users, "it implies a sense of responsibility now," he said. "We are much more deliberate about what we do and how we think about it, and when we think about the impact, we do not think about the users." It also includes corporations, non-profit organizations, for-profit companies and other entities, he said.

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