Tech workers now want to know: What are we building this for?

Across the technology industry, rank-and-file employees are demanding greater insight into how their companies are deploying the technology that they built

Jack Poulson, a Google research scientist, recently became alarmed by reports that the company was developing a search engine for China that would censor content on behalf of the government.
 
While Dr. Poulson works on search technologies, he had no knowledge of the product, which was code-named Dragonfly. So in a meeting last month with Jeff Dean, the company’s head of artificial intelligence, Dr. Poulson asked if Google planned to move ahead with the product and if his work would contribute to censorship and surveillance in China.
 
According to Dr. Poulson, Mr. Dean said that Google complied with