Vint Cerf is the longtime chief internet evangelist for Google. But he is also one of the fathers of the internet — from work he couldn’t have done without the help of the government.
So what does he think about Google employees protesting their company’s work with the government?
“It’s a call to morality,” Cerf said in an interview with this publication Sunday night at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, where he was one of the speakers at a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Doug Engelbart’s epic computing demo. “That’s a good thing.”
After Google workers protested the tech giant’s project to provide the Pentagon with artificial intelligence technology for drone analysis over concerns it could be used for more precise drone strikes in war, the company said earlier this year it would not renew the contract. Google CEO Sundar Pichai also introduced a set of principles declaring that the company’s AI would not be knowingly used for harm.
Now Google employees are speaking up against the company’s purported work on search in China, which is expected to give the government there what it wants: a search engine it can censor.
Cerf’s long, storied career includes stints at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense agency that funded the development of the internet), Stanford University, MCI, IBM and more. He also is former chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
“I’ve worked for nonprofits, governments, companies,” he said, adding that they all need to be held accountable.
“Accountability is high on my list,” he said. “Governments need to be more accountable. Congress should be more accountable.”
