The unsigned blog post on Microsoft’s corporate website appears to be the company’s first public acknowledgement of its deep involvement in the war, which started after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and has led to the deaths of tens of thousands in Gaza.
It comes nearly three months after an investigation by The Associated Press revealed previously unreported details about the American tech giant’s close partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, with military use of commercial AI products skyrocketing by nearly 200 times after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The AP reported that the Israeli military uses Azure to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance, which can then be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house AI-enabled targeting systems and vice versa.
“I realise he had ‘I’m gonna kill a bunch of kids’ tattooed on his forehead, but I didn’t realise he was going to use the gun I sold him.”
“Ok, I mean, sure, we sold the Nazis punchcards, but seriously, what could they do with them?”
Should be required reading for anyone in tech. Bonus - great early history of punch cards and IBM.
Great minds think alike (https://lemmy.ca/comment/16584217); was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the title.
Yeah, I have a first edition of that book, it was actually startling reading it.
The note on the cover about “America’s most powerful corporation” is a BIT of hyperbole…
American companies were forbidden from doing business with Germany, BUT… IBM just happened to have a division in Switzerland and they had NO PROBLEM supplying the Nazis with the punch card tech they needed to catalog, track, round up, and exterminate their Jewish population.
We gave the serial killer a knife but he promised he won’t use it to stab people.
“No, the Israeli military didn’t use the weapon we sold them in the only action they’re involved in.”
I feel like this level of disingenuous bullshit should be punishable in some way. Like every day a child gets to smash an egg on your face and you’re not allowed to wash it off.
The company did not answer whether it or the outside firm it hired communicated or consulted with the Israeli military as part of its internal probe.
In its statement, the company also conceded that it “does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.” The company added that it could not know how its products might be used through other commercial cloud providers.
Microsoft said the Israeli military, like any other customer, was bound to follow the company’s Acceptable Use Policy and AI Code of Conduct, which prohibit the use of products to inflict harm in any way prohibited by law. In its statement, the company said it had found “no evidence” the Israeli military had violated those terms.
Those three quotes stick out to me as proof that they are pleading ignorance.
A military is not “like any other customer”. Forbid access and fact-find some more or stop pretending that you aren’t complicit in AI being used for harm.
Nobody wants to live in an age of unregulated AI use besides the power-hungry and the short-sighted — and even those people probably won’t like the consequences once the boomerang comes back.
Let’s not throw the boomerang, please. Do better.
Yikes they’re getting a bit worried now aren’t they? History will not be kind to them.
History has been very kind for all military business.
Here the first few lines from the wiki page.
——
American companies that had dealings with Nazi Germany included Ford Motor Company,[2][3] Coca-Cola,[4][5] and IBM.[6][7][8] Ford Werke and Ford SAF (Ford’s subsidiaries in Germany and France, respectively) produced military vehicles and other equipment for Nazi Germany’s war effort. Some of Ford’s operations in Germany at the time were run using forced labor. When the U.S. Army liberated the Ford plants in Cologne and Berlin, they found “destitute foreign workers confined behind barbed wire.”[9]
Like Swiss banks, American car companies deny helping the Nazi war machine or profiting from forced labor at their German subsidiaries during World War II.[9] “General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland,” according to Bradford Snell. “The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM.”[9]
We didn’t have internet or the means to properly educate ourselves (at least to today’s standards) for much of the 20th century. And now, we’re finally at the point where laypeople anywhere can simply look this stuff up with relative ease. Though, few do or are aware that common corporations are responsible for atrocities.
Thanks for doing your part in spreading that awareness, even if that’s not the point you were trying to make.
