Jedi Project: Microsoft wants to continue working with the US military

Microsoft President Brad Smith commented in a blog post on the ethical discussion surrounding the collaboration of technology companies with the US military. As a result, Microsoft wants to continue working with the US Department of Defense, unlike Google.

Microsoft has been working with the Department of Defense for four decades, writes Smith, claiming that Microsoft technologies are found in many areas of the US military. The company is proud of this collaboration and wishes to contribute with its own knowledge to the ethical and political questions related to artificial intelligence.

At the same time, Microsoft understands that some employees do not want to work on military projects. Smith said in his speech that in such cases, Microsoft would support and encourage a change of position within the company.

Microsoft wants to join the Jedi project

Smith also mentions the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (Jedi) project, a cloud computing project of the Ministry of Defense. The challenge is to move data from the US Department of Defense to a cloud managed by a company. Jedi is supposed to last up to ten years and has ten billion US dollars.

Microsoft participated in the project bidding contest – unlike Google. The reason for the rejection of Google was the possibility that Jedi did not comply with its own rules on artificial intelligence. It is conceivable, however, that Google simply wanted to avoid such agitation that early in 2018: at that time, the employees had protested against the military project Maven, which eventually will not continue.