A few weeks after Google dropped out of the competition for a $10-billion cloud computing contract with the U.S. Defense Department, citing the potential conflicts with the company’s seven principles guiding how it will ethically use artificial intelligence, Microsoft said that will continue to sell AI and other advanced technologies to the U.S. Defense Department and intelligence agencies.
CEO Satya Nadella first made the announcement to employees during a monthly Q&A session, but in a blog post Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said that given the “public interest in this question, we want to be transparent both internally and externally on where Microsoft stands on these issues.” Smith then laid out “three straightforward convictions” guiding Microsoft’s work with the military.
First, we believe in the strong defense of the United States and we want the people who defend it to have access to the nation’s best technology, including from Microsoft.
Second, we appreciate the important new ethical and policy issues that artificial intelligence is creating for weapons and warfare. We want to use our knowledge and voice as a corporate citizen to address these in a responsible way through the country’s civic and democratic processes.
Third, we understand that some of our employees may have different views. We don’t ask or expect everyone who works at Microsoft to support every position the company takes. We also respect the fact that some employees work in, or may be citizens of, other countries, and they may not want to work on certain projects. As is always the case, if our employees want to work on a different project or team – for whatever reason – we want them to know we support talent mobility. Given our size and product diversity, we often have open jobs across the company and we want people to look for the work they want to do, including with help from Microsoft’s HR team.
Smith added that “we appreciate that technology is creating new ethical and policy issues that the country needs to address in a thoughtful and wise manner. That’s why it’s important that we engage as a company in the public dialogue on these issues.”
Artificial intelligence, augmented reality and other technologies are raising new and profoundly important issues, including the ability of weapons to act autonomously. 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.
The Pentagon is seeking a a tech company to help with a project dubbed the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud (JEDI), which “involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system,” according to Bloomberg. Google had initially bid on the contract, but a spokesperson sent a a statement to TechCrunch indicating that while the company is “working to support the US government with our cloud in many areas, we are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.”
Google had previously dealt with a backlash from employees upset with the company’s participation in a defense program called Project Maven, which aimed to improve the accuracy of military drones.
However, Microsoft decided to bid on the JEDI contract, with Smith calling it “an important defense project.” The Pentagon has not indicated when it will award the contract.
“We want the people of this country and especially the people who serve this country to know that we at Microsoft have their backs,” Smith said. “They will have access to the best technology that we create.”
Photo: Microsoft