Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioural economist, stepped down on Saturday, saying he doesn’t believe the council is the “right forum” to tackle ethical issues in AI. Council member Joanna Bryson also expressed concerns about her fellow council members. On Monday, Google employees circulated a petition calling for the removal of council member Kay Cole James, who has fought against gay and trans rights and undocumented immigration. Some AI researchers have called on Google to remove Dyan Gibbens, CEO of drone company Trumbull Unmanned, who has worked on U.S. military drones. (Bloomberg)

Talking point: The council was created to appease critics of the company’s AI development; last year, Google stopped work on Project Maven, its military drone project, after outcry from employees. This news could hamper its ability to grow its cloud business. The company bowed out of a Pentagon contract competition worth US$10 billion for a military cloud-computing system in 2018, saying it could conflict with its values for artificial intelligence. In early 2018, CEO Sundar Pichai said its cloud services brought in US$1 billion a quarter, though it’s still behind market leaders like Amazon Web Services, which brought in US$7.43 billion in Q4 2018.