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Following the release of Google's controversial US military project in the cloud, an open letter claiming to come from an indeterminate number of Microsoft employees urged the tech giant to withdraw from the military project.
Of a potential value of up to $ 10 billion, "Joint Enterprise Infrastructure (JEDI)" is a cloud computing contract that aims to bring together the entire military in the envelope of 39, a single cloud provider.
"The contract has a massive reach and is surrounded by secrecy, making it almost impossible to know what we would build as workers," writes an open letter titled "Microsoft, do not bid on JEDI" on the portal Medium of "Microsoft employees".
"Many Microsoft employees do not believe that what we build should be used to wage war. "When we decided to work at Microsoft, we did it in the hope of enabling every person on the planet to achieve more results, and not with the intention of ending lives and increasing lethality. continues the open letter.
For those who say that another company will simply take over JEDI where Microsoft leaves it, we would ask the workers at this company to do the same, the letter said.
"A race to the bottom is not an ethical position. Like those who have taken action at Google, Salesforce and Amazon, we ask all employees of technology companies to ask you how your work will be used, if it will be applied and if you act according to your principles, "said Microsoft employees.
Succumbing to the pressure of employees, Google abandoned last week its offer to be part of the JEDI contract.
Employees have criticized and raised ethical questions about facilitating the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on weapons, illegal surveillance and technologies that can cause "general harm".
"We need clear ethical guidelines and a significant responsibility to determine the acceptable uses of our technology and those that are not. Microsoft has already recognized the dangers of the technology it builds. No law prevents the company from exercising itself its own internal control and to respect its ethics ", specifies the letter of the employees of Microsoft.
On October 9, Microsoft wrote an article on its blog, claiming that the company was making a technological transformation that opened new mission scenarios to government agencies, which was simply not possible before.
"We are witnessing a technological transformation that opens the door to new mission scenarios so that government agencies have the ability to plan further, collect information more efficiently and provide information where it is needed most", said the message.
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