Staff at Google’s AI research lab DeepMind have voted to unionize due to growing concerns surrounding the company’s ties to the U.S. military and the use of its AI products in warfare.
Workers at DeepMind’s London headquarters sent a letter to management on Tuesday asking the company to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as their joint representatives.
Citing unnamed DeepMind employees, The Guardian reports that the vote took place last month amid reports that Google was preparing to sign a deal with the U.S. Department of Defense allowing the Pentagon to use the company’s AI models in classified settings. Google ultimately signed the agreement last week despite employee backlash.
The day before news of the Google-Pentagon AI deal broke, more than 600 Google employees—including directors and vice presidents—signed a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai urging the company not to allow its AI systems to be used in classified military settings.
“We want to see AI benefit humanity; not to see it being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways. This includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance but extends beyond,” the letter read.
One DeepMind worker told The Guardian that the U.S. war in Iran and the Trump administration’s feud with Anthropic suggested that the Pentagon is “not a responsible partner.”
“I have joined the union due to concerns about AI being used to empower authoritarianism, whether through military or surveillance applications, both foreign and domestic,” the worker told The Guardian. “By unionizing, we are taking the traditional route for workers to organize and have a say.”
The tech branch of the Communication Workers Union also posted a list of demands from DeepMind staff, including calls for stronger AI principles. Primarily, the workers want Google to commit to not developing weapons or AI systems meant to harm people or surveillance technology that could violate human rights.
The workers are also calling for stronger whistleblower protections and the right for employees to abstain from work that violates their ethical or moral beliefs.
In the letter to management, the unions warned that if Google refuses to voluntarily recognize them, they will ask the U.K.’s Central Arbitration Committee to intervene and potentially force the company to negotiate.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo. However, the company previously defended its deal with the Pentagon.
“We are proud to be part of a broad consortium of leading AI labs and technology and cloud companies providing AI services and infrastructure in support of national security. We support government agencies across both classified and non-classified projects, applying our expertise to areas like logistics, cybersecurity, diplomatic translation, fleet maintenance, and the defense of critical infrastructure,” a Google spokesperson told Gizmodo in an emailed statement at the time. “We remain committed to the private and public sector consensus that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight.”
All of this comes as Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies are increasingly agreeing to let their AI models be used in classified U.S. military work.
Last week, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon Web Services, and startup Reflection AI were announced as the latest companies to sign agreements with the Pentagon related to classified AI work. They joined Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX, bringing the total number of major AI companies participating in classified military projects to seven.
