A few weeks ago, throngs of internet users were both horrified and darkly amused by the works of Gemini, Google’s (apparently) state of the art AI image generator. Google Gemini gave the world a host of oddities, not least of all African American renditions of Nazi soldiers and female founding “fathers.” People have complained against the app’s evident “wokeness” and biases, its distortion of history, and its apparent lack of oversight, but according to a new article from The Free Press, some former Google employees were not at surprised by the works of Gemini. For them, Gemini is in keeping with Google’s corporate culture and represents the tech giant’s prioritization of ideology over excellence. Here is an excerpt from the report:

“The model is just a reflection of the people who trained it,” one former AI researcher at Google Brain, who asked not to be named, told us. “It’s just a series of decisions that humans have made.” 

Google’s Woke AI Wasn’t a Mistake. We Know. We Were There. | The Free Press (thefp.com)

The claim that technology, and AI in particular, is “neutral” isn’t accurate, according to these whistleblowers. Gemini reflects the intentions of the people who created it, just like Facebook reflected the wishes and manipulations of Mark Zuckerberg when he built the program in 2004. The users of such tech, then, run the risk of being not-so-subtly influenced by the decisions of these Big Tech business models.

The Free Press report further notes that Google executives cried innocence after Gemini’s wild takes on race and history. The CEO declared that Google’s products have always been intended to be unbiased, and the goal of the company is to organize the world’s information in a helpful way. Those who know the culture, though, as former insiders, tell a different story.

These companies have radical power over the imaginations of millions of people, and through algorithm and seductive business modeling, can influence the way we think, feel, and even vote. AI’s distortions and biases, then, can have negatively impact those who are simply interested in an accurate presentation of the world and its history. The rogue Gemini is given to lies, and based on the evidence, its creators are in denial about their own ideological commitments.