A group of approximately 50 Microsoft employees released a public letter addressed to company leadership denouncing the awarding of a U.S. military contract to Microsoft to adapt its HoloLens augmented reality technology for use in combat scenarios.
“While [Microsoft] has previously licensed tech to the U.S. Military, it has never crossed the line into weapons development. With this contract, it does,” the letter read. “The application of HoloLens within the IVAS [integrated visual augmentation] system is designed to help people kill.”
The Feb. 22 letter came in response to a $480 million contract to implement augmented reality into heads-up displays for use by U.S. Army soldiers in combat environments. Microsoft has recently made significant progress on its consumer-and business-facing version of AR, known as HoloLens.
AR, as opposed to virtual reality, or VR, uses glasses or goggles to overlay information on top of what the user sees, rather than blind the user and display everything using screens. Originally touted as a productivity-centric or gaming-centric accessory, AR could allow soldiers to know the locations of team members, see heat signatures in real time, or have waypoints marked for them by an observing entity not on the battlefield.
The Army has stated that the service “must increase lethality, mobility, survivability, and its ability to counter emerging threats, or risk being overmatched on the future battlefield.”
The protesting employees, who said the project would make killing akin to a video game, demanded that Microsoft abandon the contract, cancel all development of weapons technologies, and revise its use policies to effectively guarantee that the company would never bid on military contracts in the future.
While expressing sympathy for its employees’ concerns, Microsoft doubled down on its stance in a statement. “We gave this issue careful consideration,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We always appreciate feedback from employees and provide many avenues for their voices to be heard. In fact, we heard from many employees throughout the fall.”
“As we said then, we’re committed to providing our technology to the U.S. Department of Defense, which includes the U.S. Army under this contract. As we’ve also said, we’ll remain engaged as an active corporate citizen in addressing the important ethical and public policy issues relating to AI and the military.”
The earlier statement referred to by the spokesperson addressed the company’s bid on the Department of Defense’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud project, a complete rework of the DOD’s “end-to-end IT infrastructure.”
Microsoft President Brad Smith insisted that artificial intelligence and advanced technologies are better developed by the people who understand them best, rather than those who don’t, especially when the worst-case risk is a war being started by machines.
“Artificial intelligence, augmented reality and other technologies are raising new and profoundly important issues, including the ability of weapons to act autonomously,” Smith wrote. “As we have discussed these issues with governments, we’ve appreciated that no military in the world wants to wake up to discover that machines have started a war. But we can’t expect these new developments to be addressed wisely if the people in the tech sector who know the most about technology withdraw from the conversation.”
Microsoft said in the same post that employees that object to working on certain projects, including U.S. military projects, could be transferred to other tasks. The company also asserted its desire to support the military, saying it believes in the “strong defense of the United States” and wants the military to have the “best technology” in the country.
“As a company, Microsoft was founded and is headquartered in the United States, and we’ve prospered throughout our 43 years from the many benefits that this country offers,” Smith wrote. “We also recognize that we have a global mission, global customers and a global responsibility. We’ll need to work through these issues in other countries, and we’ll work to do so in an appropriate and thoughtful manner.”
“But when it comes to the U.S. military, as a company, Microsoft will be engaged.”
