Last week , Googledropped its bidfor the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure ( JEDI ) , a massive military cloud computing contract bridge potentially worth up to $ 10 billion , amid employee repercussion and concern the projection could ravish their “ AI principles . ” Now an undecided letter claiming to be from an unspecified number of Microsoft employee is advocate the Redmond , Washington - ground tech behemoth to also back down from its own JEDI bid .
In the letter of the alphabet , which was published onblogging situation Medium , the employees wrote that they joined Microsoft with “ the expectation that the technologies we build will not cause harm or human hurt . ” They also accused Microsoft executives of betray the company ’s artificial intelligence rationale — ones that state A.I. should be “ fair , reliable and safe , private and secure , inclusive , transparent , and accountable”—in pursuit of “ short - terminus net . ”
From the Medium post :
We need to put JEDI in perspective . This is a closemouthed $ 10 billion project with the dream of building “ a more lethal ” military force overseen by the Trump Administration . The Google workers who protested these quislingism and force the fellowship to take action saw this . We do too .
So we ask , what are Microsoft ’s A.I. Principles , especially regarding the violent app of hefty A.I. engineering science ? How will workers , who build and sustain these service in the first place , know whether our work is being used to aid profiling , surveillance , or killing ?
… Microsoft ’s decision to follow up on JEDI restate the need for clear ethical guidelines , accountability , transparency , and oversight .
Microsoft , do n’t tender on JEDI .
AsFedscoop note , the unfastened alphabetic character was published “ just hours after bids were due for the JEDI contract . ”
Microsoft did not like a shot respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo , though a spokesperson tell theDaily Telegraph , “ Microsoft submitted its bid on the JEDI contract on the October 12 deadline . While we do n’t have a way to aver the authenticity of this letter of the alphabet , we always encourage employees to partake in their views with us . ”
The JEDI contract is essentially an endeavor to get the entire armed services under the envelope of asingle cloud supplier , which could improve everything from canonic file transportation speeds to automated analysis of surveillance images and mass displacement of stop papers . Since those capabilities could be used tosupportcombat operations , employees at some companies have become concerned the JEDI winner would essentially become components of the U.S. state of war machine .
In addition to ethics concerns by employees at Silicon Valley giants compete for the declaration , the process has become contentious because the winner - takes - all bidding cognitive operation is back by only one major power player : Amazon . While Google cited ethics concerns when pulling its bidding , Google , Microsoft , International Business Machines Corp. , and Oracle Corp. had all supported splitting the declaration into smaller pieces . Amazon is widely consider a front - runner for the contract and already has a $ 600 million contract with the CIA , with rival company complaining that using a individual vendor for JEDI would essentiallyhand it a monopoly positionin the defence market place .
[ Mediumviathe Telegraph / Fedscoop ]
AmazonGoogleMicrosoft
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and cultivation news show in your inbox day by day .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
Please select your desired newssheet and present your electronic mail to upgrade your inbox .
You May Also Like
