Last week, Google said that it had concerns about the use of AI in the US Department of Defense’s JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) project, and as such it would not be bidding for the contract.
Last week, Google said that it had concerns about the use of AI in the US Department of Defense’s JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) project, and as such it would not be bidding for the contract.
Now Microsoft employees have published an open letter expressing their concerns about JEDI, the secrecy it is shrouded in, and the potential for it to cause harm or human suffering. The letter has a simple message: „Microsoft, don’t bid on JEDI“.
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The letter — which is simply „signed by employees of Microsoft“ — says: „We joined Microsoft to create a positive impact on people and society, with the expectation that the technologies we build will not cause harm or human suffering. Tuesday’s blog post serves as a public declaration of Microsoft’s intent to bid on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract — a contract that represents a $10 billion project to build cloud services for the Department of Defense. The contract is massive in scope and shrouded in secrecy, which makes it nearly impossible to know what we as workers would be building“.
The authors of the letter go on to say that they, and many other Microsoft employees do not believe that „what we build should be used for waging war“. With the Department of Defense saying of JEDI „this program is truly about increasing the lethality of our department“, it is easy to see why there is discontent.
The letter asks that Microsoft take notice of the views of its employees just like Google, Amazon and others took notice of theirs:
It goes on to pose a couple of questions to Microsoft:
The employees say that Microsoft risks betraying its own principles if it gets involved with JEDI. They ask that the company is not drawn by the allure of short-term profits and instead stands „by its own ethical compass“.
The letter concludes by saying:
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