Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: HoloLens, microsoft

Microsoft Employees Demand a Military Contract Be Terminated For HoloLens

An interesting situation has popped up at Microsoft over the past week, as a number of employees have demanded a military contract be terminated. The group have remained anonymous for obvious reasons but have gone under the name "Microsoft Workers 4 Good" on Twitter, publishing an open letter to President and CLO Brad Smith and CEO Satya Nadella, in which they demand the IVAS contract be canceled and demand "stricter ethical guidelines". The short version: They don't want the HoloLens technology to be used by the military for the use of creating weapons.

Bloomberg originally reported on the story a few months back, showing Microsoft signed a $479 million contract with the United States Army, which allows the use of their technology to help develop augmented reality tech for combat use. As you can see, there are members of the company who did not agree to be a part of that and feel the work they did in creating something for entertainment and educational purposes shouldn't be utilized for global conflict. Id this sounds familiar, it should, because this what the military has done in the past with programs like the VIRTSIM System, where soldiers train in VR. (This is also the sub-plot of a ton of sci-fi novels where the government trains kids to be soldiers, but that's just a sidebar.)

We'll keep an eye on this and see how it develops, but so far, the program has over 100 signatures from Microsoft employees and growing.

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