Alphabet Inc.’s Google (GOOGL) has announced in a statement Monday that it will withdraw its bid for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), a multi-billion dollar cloud computing contract by the Defense Department. According to its statement to Bloomberg, Google will no longer compete for the contract, which is estimated to be worth $10 billion, because the contract does not align with the company’s principles on how artificial intelligence (AI) should be used.
“We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles. And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications,” said a Google spokesperson.
In June, Google announced that it would not renew it’s contract for the Pentagon’s Project Maven program, which uses artificial intelligence to enhance drone strikes. The company stated that in working on such a project, it was directly involved in warfare.