Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World

by Cade Metz

At Microsoft and Amazon, employees protested against military and surveillance contracts.15 But these protests weren’t nearly as effective. And even at Google, the groundswell eventually vanished. The company parted ways with most of those who had stood up against Maven, including Meredith Whittaker and Jack Poulson. Fei-Fei Li returned to Stanford. Though Google had dropped the contract, it was still pushing in the same direction. A year later, Kent Walker took the stage at an event in Washington alongside General Shanahan and said that the Maven contract was not indicative of the company’s broader aims.16 “That was a decision focused on a discrete contract,” he said, “not a broader statement about our willingness or history of working with the Department of Defense.”