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Technicians are more and more uncomfortable with the work of their employers with the US government, especially with the army. Some events have led to a real change: Google decided last year not to renew its contract with the Pentagon to apply artificial intelligence on images of drones, after 4,000 employees had signed a petition protesting against this arrangement.
Last week, a group of Microsoft workers released a petition calling on leaders to end a contract to develop augmented reality technology for the US military. "We have not signed up to develop weapons and we ask for our opinion on how our work is used," the petition said on Twitter.
On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella rejected the call. "We took the decision in principle not to refuse technology to the institutions we elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy," Nadella told CNN Business at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The petition, that the group Microsoft Workers 4 Good claims received more than 200 signatures, in response to a $ 479 million contract, announced for the first time in November, under which Microsoft would develop a HoloLens augmented reality system prototype for the US military. According to the petition, the stated purpose of the contract is to "rapidly develop, test and manufacture a single platform that allows soldiers to fight, repeat and train, which increases the lethality, mobility and awareness of the situation necessary to ensure future and future opponents.
The petition acknowledges that Microsoft has long been selling technology to the US military, but says the contract "goes beyond the borders of weapons development".
Microsoft won a contract for the development of its HoloLens augmented reality helmet, shown here, for the US military.
Jason Alden / Bloomberg / Getty Images
Nadella's comments echo Monday an article published by Microsoft President Brad Smith last year after employees protested against Microsoft's bid for a cloud computing deal with the company. Ministry of Defense, called JEDI or "Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure".
"We believe in the strong defense of the United States and we want the people who defend it to have access to the best technology in the country, including that of Microsoft," Smith wrote. He stated that employees who did not want to work on specific projects, for whatever reason, could move on to other projects. A spokesman for Microsoft reiterated this point on Monday, adding that the company "will remain engaged as an active corporate citizen to address ethical and public policy issues related to intelligence." artificial and to the army ".
Microsoft Workers 4 Good did not respond to a direct message via Twitter.
Another sign of unease among government technicians, Microsoft employees last year issued an open letter protesting the company's work in the field of immigration and customs. And a collaborator of the open source code management tool, Lerna, has modified the project license to prohibit ICE or organizations working with ICE, including Microsoft, from using the software . The license change was quickly canceled.
The events had the biggest impact at Google. After announcing that it would not renew the contract for drone imagery, known as Project Maven, the company issued guidelines for its future work on artificial intelligence. These guidelines allow the company to work with the military, but it later stated that it would not bid on the JEDI contract because it could not be assured that the work would conform to its principles. .
At the same time, the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, said: "If the big tech companies give up the US Department of Defense, the country will be in trouble," said at the WIRED25 summit: "
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