Last Updated on 04/10/2021 by Tarun
According to a report, Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus and an all-new defense start-up shared his views on Donald Trump’s defense contract scrutiny.
According to Palmer Luckey, Alphabet’s Google should have renewed its contract with the Department of Defence. “I think they were making a mistake,” said Luckey in letting the contract expire, who is a supporter of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. “It’s really important that the United States maintains a technological leadership. It’s important that our military retains a technological leadership.”
Google’s government contract, which purely focused on Artificial Intelligence, expired earlier this year. But the tech giant has faced backlash in the past week for its continuation of AI work in Shanghai after billionaire tech investor and Donald Trump supporter Peter Theil called the company treasonous.
Luckey sold his Oculus virtual reality headset company to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion and left there in March 2017 under controversy. Since then, he’s founded Anduril Industries, a defense technology start-up that’s targeting on national security and artificial intelligence.
Reportedly, Anduril supports a government AI drone project, though Luckey denied commenting on it due to confidentiality. He stressed on the importance of the U.S. leading technological innovation, later comparing AI to the nuclear weapons race of the past, in a “Squawk on the Street” interview. “If we had not been the leader, we would not have dictated the rules,” said Luckey. If scientists and researchers across the U.S. denied working on nuclear weapons due to ethical reasons as Google did on AI, the world would be much worse, he further said. “Imagine if the Nazis were the first person to make practical nuclear weapons,” he said. “Imagine if the Russians were the first people to make practical nuclear weapons. We would be in a very different world today. It would be a lot worse.”
Google failed to respond instantly to a request for comment.
