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Microsoft Staff: Do Not Use HoloLens for War
- egao1980 8y agoIt will be used for porn and military purposes. It's extremely naive to assume the opposite.
- seba_dos1 8y agoWhat's more, it's extremely naive to work in big tech like Microsoft or Google and not expect your work to be used by military some day.
- cbg0 8y agoYou say that as if there's a huge history of these companies' tech being used to enhance warfare.
- PakG1 8y agoDon't think you need history to make a prediction of how history might change for well-thought-out reasons. And Windows is a key OS in many military operations/departments.
- cbg0 8y agoAs an employee, you kind of need history to be able to make a prediction like that, otherwise you will be a bit surprised when you see your employer is taking on contracts to enhance the military, to speak to the naivete that was brought up earlier. While Windows might be used by the military, that doesn't mean it was built to enhance warfare, the same way if the military used Ubuntu you wouldn't expect Canonical employees to protest about it.
- Sendotsh 8y agoMilitaries around the world already use the Xbox 360 controller extensively. As well as Surfaces, and of course the obvious like Windows, Excel, Word, etc.
- cmroanirgo 8y agoAnd before that, different versions of windows. I recall going for an interview with some sonar guys looking at using Direct3D back in the late 90s.
- manigandham 8y agoThere is. Silicon Valley was formed out of military projects.
- rvp-x 8y agoI see no objections regarding use for porn in the article.
- mjfl 8y agolet's add some critical thinking: why not use it for war? Would it be better for the world if the US military was less well equipped relative to Al-Qaeda, Russia? I sure don't think so. I think it's best that any fight our military gets into is as asymmetric as possible, and in general the more asymmetry, the less people will die. I'd further like to emphasize that the idea that the inequality in strength between our military and various 3rd world warlords is a form of injustice is absurd and childlike and anyone who thinks this way deserves to have their opinions discounted like children.
- gammateam 8y agoI’d say your paranoia and justification for any tool to be used for a potential unknown threat deserves to get discounted like a child’s Yes it would be better for the world if the US took a more collaborative approach with other regional powers that it disagrees with
- GeneralTspoon 8y agoInteresting thought experiment: if you think of the military as a business - then you’re basically advocating for the US to have a monopoly on military power.
- quietbritishjim 8y ago> deserves to have their opinions discounted like children. Although I agree with your general sentiment, there's no need for ad hominem attacks like this.
- mjfl 8y ago
- AllegedAlec 8y agoThey are completely free to quit if they don't like what they're building is used to help their soldiers defend their own country.
- mjburgess 8y agoThe only attack on american soil I can recall is Pearl Habor... Almost invariably, to provide the american military with hardware is to arm an offensive force.
- wrkronmiller 8y agoAs has been pointed out repeatedly in other comments, we live in a post-nuclear era where military strength is, itself, the defense. In this particular case, it's less relevant, but since we are generalizing I'm pointing it out. As for improving military training and tactical hardware, yes it will most likely be used for offensive purposes. The absence of the technology wouldn't stop those offensives though; the absence would just result in less-well-trained less-well-equipped troops in the same situation. As has been pointed out elsewhere, bad training and lack of information is likely to lead to more deaths. While I think it's wonderful employees of major tech companies are trying to drive more ethical choices, this was an odd choice for a line in the sand.
- freeflight 8y ago> we live in a post-nuclear era That's a bold statement to make, particularly in the context of the US pulling out of INF and JCPA (Iran deal), especially when accounting for the reality that nuclear weapons "modernization" is still steadily going on [0]. That's not something you'd expect to see in the "post-nuclear era". Particularly not with a US president who clearly does not understand nuclear weapons and would just love to sell and use them. [0] https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-compensating-super-fuze/ https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni...
- 8y ago
- alkonaut 8y agoRefreshing to see employees of a megacorp speak up against company decisions. I wish we could see more of the same from Facebook. Unfortunately a huge paycheck seems to do weird things to your ethical compass. It’s not enough that those that disagree simply quit.
- austincheney 8y agoWhat is the ethical consideration here? Augmented reality headsets aren't weapons. I find it unrefreshing to see employees warping something benign to achieve personal attention. This is a fight in search of a subject.
- alkonaut 8y ago> Augmented reality headsets aren't weapons. Who you sell to can always be an ethical consideration, even if the product isn't "unethical" in itself. > to achieve personal attention. What makes you think these people would want "personal attention"? Isn't the attention here mostly a risk?
- austincheney 8y agoWho they are selling to is an ethical entity, their own government, so this point doesn’t make any sense. I am thinking this matter is about personal attention because the complaint is absurd. It simply isn’t rational.
- jrs95 8y agoIf they really want to have any control over what Microsoft does with their technology they should unionize. Same goes for any other large tech company.
- cbg0 8y agoThey can always package up anything used for military purposes and move it to a different branch or subsidiary to create a large enough disconnect that will keep most employees satisfied.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoNot really, because they need to keep HoloLens inside the company. They could create a subsidiary which buys HoloLenses and sells them to the government, but that would still mean that Microsoft is taking a contract to sell the units.
- cbg0 8y ago> Not really, because they need to keep HoloLens inside the company. HoloLens maybe, but the hypothetical repackaged FreedomLens could simply be based off of it.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoWhere exactly is the limit? Windows, Microsoft Office and other Software is used "for war" all the time, and not just by the US.
- imglorp 8y agoI think that's a false dichotomy. Office software is general purpose, and maybe the military buys it like everyone else. AR gear for soldiers is not general purpose. Similarly, criminals and non-criminals alike use public roads and internet, but only one of those groups would have need of a weapon with a ground-off serial number, for example. So is the point the buyer, or the purpose?
- jplayer01 8y agoMicrosoft is a defense contractor. They've been working closely with the military since the 90s. I'm not sure when people decided to suddenly ignore or forget this.
- alistairSH 8y agoDoes it matter when? If the employees decide they don't want to develop for the military, that's their prerogative. They can try to change their current employer's practices, or they can leave.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoHoloLens is not much less dual-use as Ms Office, I'd say...
- shireboy 8y agoExactly. So is Linux, C++, and Java. I remember being at a conference where this was discussed ages ago. The speaker was describing a colleague chastising her for working on code for a guidance system. He had helped develop a mouse, which she pointed out was also used throughout the military. It’s good that there are people who do not want to find more and more better ways to blow each other up, but disingenuous to try to ban a particular technology. If MS doesn’t get the contracts, someone else will. Some exceptions-nuclear and maybe autonomous AI. But even the later seems inevitable. AR will either be a flop or ubiquitous, and so you can’t prevent that any more than Englebert could prevent the mouse being used for military purposes.
- taspeotis 8y agoPrevious discussion [1]. Microsoft Workers Demand It Drop $450M U.S. Army Contract (reuters.com) 202 points by petethomas 13 hours ago | cached | flag | hide | past | web | favorite | 260 comments [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229773
- laythea 8y agoThis sounds like a publicity stunt. No group of educated people can seriously think this would have any effect...
- vitro 8y agoDo something is better than do nothing.
- apple4ever 8y agoNot necessarily. Doing something can be worse than doing nothing.
- viraptor 8y ago... said some person about every single strike action, protest, etc. Yet it only depends on whether you can get a critical mass behind your idea.
- misingnoglic 8y agoIt did at Google
- dlahoda 8y agoI hope they will use SignalR and Orleans as backend for battle operations so I can market my skills as battle tested. https://github.com/dotnet/orleans https://github.com/dotnet/orleans https://github.com/aspnet/AspNetCore/tree/master/src/SignalR https://github.com/aspnet/AspNetCore/tree/master/src/SignalR