Google's Project Nimbus Takes AI Surveillance To A New Level

AI can be terrifying when used in horrible ways.

Google does a lot of stupid things. All giant corporations are the same in that regard. But it takes special effort to do something truly terrible. That’s where Google’s Project Nimbus comes in on the spectrum.

Project Nimbus is a joint effort of Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government that provides futuristic surveillance capabilities through the use of advanced machine learning models. Like it or not, that’s part of the future of state security, and not any more terrible than many other similar projects. Many of us even use similar tech in and around our homes.

surveillance: big eye looking out of smartphone

Where things get dark and ugly is what Google says about Project Nimbus’ capabilities using the company’s technology:

Nimbus training documents emphasize “the ‘faces, facial landmarks, emotions’-detection capabilities of Google’s Cloud Vision API,” and in one Nimbus training webinar, a Google engineer confirmed for an Israeli customer that it would be possible to “process data through Nimbus in order to determine if someone is lying”.

Yes, the company that gave us the awesomely bad YouTube algorithms now wants to sell algorithms to determine if someone is lying to the police. Let that sink in. This is a science that Microsoft has abandoned(opens in new tab) because of its inherent problems.