Microsoft Employees Don’t Want To Continue Hololens Contract With The US Army

Some Microsoft employees have recently called for the tech giant to stop its cooperation with the US Army in the HoloLens project that worths millions of dollars.

In the letter sent to Satya Nadella and Brad Smith, who are Microsoft’s CEO, and President and Chief Legal Officer respectively, the group stated, "We are a global coalition of Microsoft workers, and we refuse to create technology for warfare and oppression." The letter was then posted on Twitter on February 22nd.

In November of last year, the company signed a contract worthing $480 million to offer prototype HoloLens AR systems to the US Army. These systems will be applied in combat training and missions.

One month earlier, Microsoft had revealed that if ignoring moral issues, the company got a real awareness of how the advanced technologies will be applied when partnering with the Army.

To reply to the above letter, Microsoft raked up its blog post made in October 2018 concerning that the company is cooperating with the Army. According to its latest revelation, it is considering whether to offer the HoloLens technology to the US Army or not.

The similar case happened to Google in 2018 when its employees protested the company participating in the Project Maven of the Pentagon. For those unknown, the Project Maven aims to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the accuracy level in analyzing drone footage.

In the case, a part of Google’s staff quitted their jobs. Until April 2018, as reported, over 4,000 employees decided to sign a petition that was sent to Sundar Pichai, their CEO, to demand he gave up the project. Two months later, the company claimed that it would ditch the Project Maven, as well as stop looking for similar contracts. However, it would keep collaborating with the Army.