"A Microsoft employee disrupted the company’s 50th anniversary event to protest its use of AI.

“Shame on you,” said Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, speaking directly to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate when Microsoft is killing children. Shame on you all.”"

https://www.theverge.com/news/643670/microsoft-employee-protest-50th-annivesary-ai

#AI #Microsoft #Israel #AIWarfare #Palestine

"This troubling decision to potentially profit from high-tech warfare, which could have serious consequences for real lives and real people comes after criticism from EFF, human rights activists, and other international groups. Despite its pledges and vocal commitment to human rights, Google has faced criticism for its involvement in Project Nimbus, which provides advanced cloud and AI capabilities to the Israeli government, tools that an increasing number of credible reports suggest are being used to target civilians under pervasive surveillance in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. EFF said in 2024, “When a company makes a promise, the public should be able to rely on it.” Rather than fully living up to its previous human rights commitments, it seems Google has shifted its priorities.

Google is a company valued at $2.343 trillion that has global infrastructure and a massive legal department and appears to be leaning into the current anti-humanitarian moment. The fifth largest company in the world seems to have chosen to make the few extra bucks (relative to the company’s earnings and net worth) that will come from mass surveillance tools and AI-enhanced weapons systems."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/google-wrong-side-history

#AI #AIWarfare #Google #BigTech #MassSurveillance

"In the context of unprecedented U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) budgets, this paper examines the recent history of DoD funding for academic research in algorithmically based warfighting. We draw from a corpus of DoD grant solicitations from 2007 to 2023, focusing on those addressed to researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Considering the implications of DoD funding for academic research, the paper proceeds through three analytic sections. In the first, we offer a critical examination of the distinction between basic and applied research, showing how funding calls framed as basic research nonetheless enlist researchers in a war fighting agenda. In the second, we offer a diachronic analysis of the corpus, showing how a 'one small problem' caveat, in which affirmation of progress in military technologies is qualified by acknowledgement of outstanding problems, becomes justification for additional investments in research. We close with an analysis of DoD aspirations based on a subset of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant solicitations for the use of AI in battlefield applications. Taken together, we argue that grant solicitations work as a vehicle for the mutual enlistment of DoD funding agencies and the academic AI research community in setting research agendas. The trope of basic research in this context offers shelter from significant moral questions that military applications of one's research would raise, by obscuring the connections that implicate researchers in U.S. militarism."

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.17840

#AI #DoD #USA #AIWarfare #MilitaryAI #DARPA