Microsoft is intimately connected to the global surveillance infrastructure currently propping up US imperialism. Parts of the company basically operate as a defense contractor, not much different from Raytheon or Northrup Grumman.
For what it's worth, Google has said it's not letting any military play with any of their AI research. Microsoft apparently has no such qualms. Remember when the NSA offered a bounty for eavesdropping on Skype, then Microsoft bought Skype and removed all the encryption?
that PRISM was originally just a Microsoft thing, very likely built by Microsoft to funnel data to the NSA. Other companies were added later, but we know from the MUSCULAR leak etc, that some companies like Google were added involuntarily, by tapping fiber connections between data centers.
For what it's worth, Google has said it's not letting any military play with any of their AI research. Microsoft apparently has no such qualms. Remember when the NSA offered a bounty for eavesdropping on Skype, then Microsoft bought Skype and removed all the encryption?
https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f...
Giving early access to emerging AGI to an org like Microsoft makes me more than a bit nervous.
Recall from this slide in the Snowden leak : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM#/media/File:Prism_slide_...
that PRISM was originally just a Microsoft thing, very likely built by Microsoft to funnel data to the NSA. Other companies were added later, but we know from the MUSCULAR leak etc, that some companies like Google were added involuntarily, by tapping fiber connections between data centers.