"Protesters stage ‘die-in’ over Google’s work with Israeli government amid Gaza war"

Hundreds of protesters shut down traffic at the foot of Market Street on Thursday evening, chanting and waving flags in front of Google’s San Francisco offices and demanding an end to its work with the Israeli government.

Activists say their long-running complaint against the company and its billion-dollar software contract with Israel has taken on new urgency...

Prior to the event, organizers pointed to reporting on NPR and elsewhere that Israel has been using artificial intelligence systems to rapidly decide which targets to strike in Gaza. That technology, reportedly called “the Gospel,” appears to be separate from the work Google’s Cloud unit is doing for Israel, dubbed Project Nimbus. But organizers said there was “no guarantee Google’s products are not being used to support this genocidal effort.”...

News organization The Intercept previously reported that Project Nimbus technology can recognize faces and discern emotions from expressions, as well as track objects in videos. “The contract effectively allows for the development and sale of high-tech software with an explicit military use-case to the apartheid state of Israel,” organizers said before the Dec. 14 San Francisco protest.

In an emailed statement a Google spokesperson said Project Nimbus was not a military program, adding that the protest “is part of a longstanding campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work at Google.”

“We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial platform by Israeli government ministries such as finance, healthcare, transportation, and education,” the statement added. “Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”...

Kuan, who is also a member of the Alphabet Workers Union but did not speak on behalf of it, said her concern was that Google had given the Israeli government unrestricted access to its AI tools and had no way to stop them from being shared with the Israel Defense Forces...