Who are the other two?
Sony
Microsoft
Nintendo...
Google? Amazon? Capcom?
Microsoft workers protest $480m HoloLens military deal: ‘We did not sign up to develop weapons’:
- Thread starter spam musubi
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Sony
Microsoft
Nintendo...
Google? Amazon? Capcom?
I assume it is referring to big 5 tech companies and not something related to gaming.
OP
OP
The top 5 tech companies to work for, invest in, and/or are the most valuable are generally considered to be Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Netflix. The acronym FAANG is generally used. (Previously it was the big 4 - Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Apple,_Amazon,_Netflix_and_Google
If someone gave me a hololens and told me it lessened my chances of getting killed as a combatant for the US military, I would wear the hololens.
It's more like it increases your chance of killing other people. Like using a crosshairs/autoaim mod in a shooter.
Technology is gonna be the bulk of how wars will be done.
With all the metal gear references in this thread - I would like to add....I wont be surprised if something similar to a Metal gear being made (or the concept of it at least - dont mean bipedial machinery but AI based machine...or should i say peacewalker and not metal gear).
With all the metal gear references in this thread - I would like to add....I wont be surprised if something similar to a Metal gear being made (or the concept of it at least - dont mean bipedial machinery but AI based machine...or should i say peacewalker and not metal gear).
Well, since you are the expert, what happened during the Kunduz hospital bombing in Afghanistan where doctors in the hospital repeatedly contacted US forces telling them that it was a hospital and not to attack? Why were they still attacked and international law not followed?
And since the Americans are so concerned with public relations why were the men involved not criminally charged for this war crime and instead given some administrative punishments for the lives of 42 innocent civilians and brave doctors killed while trying to save lives?
What about all this during the Iraq war:
https://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/04/2013481202781452.html
What about the random killing of civilians by US soldiers from an Apache helicopter - which we would not have know about if Chelsea Manning had not leaked the video to Wikileaks
https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
The US does not and has never cared about civilian causalities in other countries. It is mainly responsible for those deaths with the weapons it sells to war torn countries. It covers up civilian deaths and if it is uncovered, does some fake PR where the perpetrators do not even face criminal charges. School buses are bombed and children massacred by American bombs in Yemen. Do you see any Americans concerned about PR or international humanitarian law regarding this?
As for this article, as the title says, Microsoft is an international company with employees from all over the world. I doubt the Indian and Chinese employees want to be involved in developing weapons that could one day be used to attack and kill their people. Microsoft can probably give the job to nationalistic Americans who are into this sort of thing.
I can understand the workers' concerns.
I just don't think Microsoft will do anything about it. Especially since the US is so ingrained in glorifying the military. The price of contract is probably not that much in the grand scheme of things either.
I just don't think Microsoft will do anything about it. Especially since the US is so ingrained in glorifying the military. The price of contract is probably not that much in the grand scheme of things either.
The most sophisticated tools in the world can be telling them that a target is civilian but it won't necessarily stop them from opening fire anyway. I don't begrudge anyone who questions the US military's ability to use this technology in a responsible manner. I could list countless examples as to why that concern is valid, but I think Iran Air Flight 655 might be the most appropriate one.
I'm not minimizing the fact that civilian casualties exist and that they're terrible in every instance. I don't know why you thought I'd disagree about that point.
None of those things have anything to do with AR for military in the field. That's just drone sensors and stuff reporting information back to command; it can be displayed on a computer screen much more easily than an AR headset. The AR headset in this case is to improve the ability to kill. Now, maybe it'll improve accuracy of shots so there is less collateral damage from actual gunfire, but I think that's the best you could get from AR used in this way.
Heck, it could make things worse - lower incidence of PTSD by hiding the faces of the people you are shooting - replace the faces of everyone you see not on your side with bullseye targets or something.
Actually I doubt it would do that, since drone pilots are getting PTSD because they're aware of how detached they are from their missions. And I'd be concerned with making war too palatable that it reduces the trauma of war. I wouldn't wish PTSD on anyone but my worst enemies, but it speaks to the toll it takes on people even if they're "unharmed." If warfare was made more palatable and easy to engage, I'd worry it'd become even easier for leaders to commit to war. And as others have pointed out, that Black Mirror episode
My wife and I are 100% convinced it was Call of Duty that led to my brother-in-law joining the Marines
Is Microsoft developing the software the military is using? Or do they just have a contract to sell $480 million worth of hololenses and provide support for them?
They're talking about the big five tech giants, which Sony and Nintendo aren't even close to being in the same stratosphere as. (Facebook is by far the smallest of the five with a market cap of $460 billion, more than four times as big as Sony and Nintendo combined)
You're assuming it was entirely developed by Americans. I can guarantee you it wasn't.
Many people have problems with working on technologies to help kill people and would have legitimate cause to opt out of working on projects like that. As far as I can tell these people worked on hololens without knowing it would be applied to military use.
Is there any part of Hololens that was designed specifically for defence applications? Honest question.
It also increases the chance of you and other civilians getting killed by highly skilled combatants of enemy forces (terrorists...)
You know what would keep them really safe? Not sending them into pointless conflicts that have nothing to do with America or NATO.
For a supposed progressive forum, there are an awful lot of military fetishists in this thread.
A few Microsoft employees refusing to work on Hololens isn't going to change that. You're asking the cart to lead the horse.
That's fine, but you're getting angry at the wrong thing. Everyone here would prefer no conflict.
Tech companies develop tech for the military all the time. Many of the so called innovations in our daily lives are introduced in the military first, then to consumers. The controversy here is that the people who developed HoloLens, didn't know/think it would be used in the military. They signed up to develop a device for consumers, not soldiers. For that reason I respect these people that speak out.
It's all about transparency.
It's all about transparency.
I don't see a problem with hardware manufacturing, but perhaps they should leave the tailored software end to a third party.
I understand not being bothered by this, but actively being upset that there are workers protesting this is some stupid shit straight up.
I understand not being bothered by this, but actively being upset that there are workers protesting this is some stupid shit straight up.
Obviously no conflict is the preferred solution. But everything about history of (not just the US) the world says that will not happen. There will always be conflict, and therefore there will always be need to keep the people safe who valuntarily put their lives on the line.
Increased lethality means eliminating the enemy before they can eliminate you. Ipso facto keeping our troops safe.
America loves to war and is going to keep on war'n hololense or not. I get the moral issues here but If the device can increase accuracy and reduce casualties then it's better than nothing. You want to protest military action it's better to look towards the government.
Not that I disagree with you, but what OS do you think the US military has used for decades? Hint, I doubt it's OSX
Not necessarily, no. I could be pedantic and describe how, in the general sense, "increased lethality" does not strictly mean "kill them before they kill you," or be less pedantic and describe scenarios like the adoption of the 5.56mm round increasing lethality without appreciably increasing troop safety, or I can be even less pedantic and point out that actually, eliminating the enemy can entail multiple things (which is why the word "casualty" even exists) and going for making soldiers more lethal is just one kinda messed up way to do that.
Can I also just point out that the leap from "if our troops can eliminate the enemy before the enemy can eliminate them they'll be safer" is both a shoddy premise and a bit of a fallacy? That is based on the premise that, given these augmented capabilities and the alleged force multiplication behind a targeting system, soldiers will be sent on assignments of similar risk level to those of today. There's no guarantee that's the case. It's based on the premise that soldiers will be safer because the primary cause of death for soldiers is direct confrontation with enemy fire. Given the state of Interceptor armor these days, that's not really the case. IIRC most deaths are due to shrapnel from explosives. Given that their own briefing talks about detection, but the best they can promise is more lethality, I'm not hopeful for soldiers being able to, say, have facial detection at checkpoints for suspicious persons or better tracking of noncombatants. If we wanted to assume that, we wouldn't even be taking the military's word for it.
Here's a counter-intuitive thought-- making soldiers better at killing might be unhealthy for them mentally. Desensitizing soldiers to killing might be unhealthy for them too, and since drone pilots can get PTSD based on what they do, it's hard to claim that long term mental health benefits are the focus. The gameification of war is also a valid ethical concern and may harm soldier safety in the long term. If you want our troops to be safe, you want them to be used sparingly and you want the participants of war at home and abroad to understand the severity of what they're committing to. Making war more like a game runs counter to these goals-- and I can't stress this enough, it might not even help with peoples' mental health. It's still a "game" where your friends can die messily and you'll be shoved into stressful situations for hours.
I can see why the people who design this would be horrified. With inventions like computers and operating systems, there's no real need to assume your operating system will help cause loss of life. I guarantee you actual computerized weapons of war aren't running Windows Vista. There's a genuine difference between a logistical tool and a device that will actively facilitate killing without the prior knowledge of its inventors.
Quite surprised at the number of blasé responses in here just sort of shrugging off the holding of corporations to ethical standards, and with an air of being all-in on the military industrial complex as an acceptable inevitability. Weird vibe. I get the idea of having a "realist" take on the matter, but so many of these opinions seem genuinely tinged with distaste for these protesting employees.
I can sympathize with them - but the idea of soldiers essentially getting Robocop visuals sounds really cool.
Robocop was meant to be satire, wasn't it? :|
Maybe Microsoft can do a boardroom demonstration of Hololens use in warfare...
But seriously, it is perfectly reasonable for workers to have issues with this. It's not some inevitability that a general tech company would leverage itself into military tech. In the end if they're really not happy they should resign and move to a company that can commit to staying out of these areas.
The thing with tech companies will always happen, but ultimately we - as in humans - don't want war to turn into a game. War is horrible. Games are for fun. We don't, on a common social level, want anyone to do horrible things for fun. We call people that do that, sociopaths. So it stands to reason that people who want to develop tech, don't want to have anything to do with that notion.