As whispers of AI hype filled the air in 2018, it seemed almost inevitable that we would soon be facing a whole new world, full of near-human robots and cybernetic dogs. But with that came a host of questions: how would it all change our jobs, how might we protect ourselves from an AI takeover,and more broadly,how could AI be designed for good instead of evil?Facingthose questions and an uncertain future, Google affirmed its commitment to ethical tech development in a statement on its AI principles, including commitments not to use its AI in ways "likely to cause overall harm," like in weapons or surveillance tech.Fast forward seven years later, and those commitmentshave been quietly scrubbed from Google's AI principles page. The move has drawn a host of criticism at the change's ominous undertones."Having that removed is erasing the work that so many people in the ethical AI space and the activist space as well had done at Google," former head of Google's ethical AI team Margaret Mitchell told Bloomberg, which broke the story. "More problematically it means Google will probably now work on deploying technology directly that can kill people."Google isn't the first AI company to retract its commitment not to make killbots. Last summer, OpenAI likewise deleted its pledge not to use AI for "military and warfare," as reported byThe Intercept at the time.Though it hasn't announced any Terminator factories yet Google said in a statement yesterday that "companies, governments, and organizations... should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security."Read: we can do whatever we want. Deal with it.And while the company's news is troubling, it's drawing on a long history of dubious profiteering. After all, Google was the first major tech company to recognize the value of surveillance through data."Google is to surveillance capitalism what the Ford Motor Company and General Motors were to mass-production-based managerial capitalism," wrote acclaimed tech critic Shoshana Zuboff in 2019. "In our time Google became the pioneer, discoverer, elaborator, experimenter, lead practitioner, role model, and diffusion hub of surveillance capitalism."As far back as the early 2000s, Google has been exploring the value of personal browsing data a leering asset sometimes known as "digital exhaust" which it realized contained predictive information about individual users as they traveled across the web.Soon, pressured by the Dot-com collapse and the need to generate revenue, Google leaned into that tech as it built the dominanttracking and advertising apparatus of our time. The revelation that user data could translate into cold hard cash spun off into a host of data-driven products like hyper-targeted ads, predictive algorithms, personal assistants, and smart homes, all of which propelled Google into the market giant it is today.Now, the past feels like prelude. As tech companies like Google dump untold billions into developing AI, the race is on to generate revenue forimpatient investors. It's no wonder that unscrupulous AI profit models are now on the table after all, they're the supposed new backbone of the company.More on Google:Something Bad Is Brewing Inside GoogleShare This Article