Workers at Google DeepMind in London have voted to unionise in a bid to block the AI lab from providing its technology to the United States and Israeli militaries.
The workers in a letter addressed to Google’s managing director for the UK and Ireland, Debbie Weinstein, asked the company to recognise the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives for DeepMind employees.
“Fundamentally, the push for unionsation is about holding Google to its own ethical standards on AI, how they monetise it, what the products do, and who they work with.
“Through the process of unionisation, workers are collectively in a much stronger place to put [demands] to an increasingly deaf management,” said John Chadfield, national officer for technology at the CWU The push to unionise began in February 2025, when Google’s parent company, Alphabet, removed a pledge not to use AI for purposes like weapons development and surveillance from its ethics guidelines, according to a DeepMind employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
“A lot of people here bought into the Google DeepMind tagline ‘to build AI responsibly to benefit humanity. “The direction of travel is to further militarisation of the AI models we’re building here,” a DeepMind employee told the media.
Increasingly, that concern is reflected across the industry. In late February, DeepMind and OpenAI staff signed an open letter in support of Anthropic, after the US Department of Defence sought to designate the lab a supply chain risk over its refusal to allow its AI to be used in autonomous weapons or for mass surveillance of US citizens.
Penultimate week, The New York Times reported that Google had entered into a deal allowing the Pentagon to use its AI for “any lawful government purpose.”
