PNN – Microsoft fired two female engineers who protested the Israeli military use of the company’s artificial intelligence products and supported the Palestinians.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, citing CNBC, according to documents seen by this American network, “Ibtihal Abusaad”, a software engineer in Microsoft’s artificial intelligence division in Canada, was fired on Monday for “arbitrary behavior, insubordination or dereliction of duty.”
Vanya Agrawal, another software engineer at Microsoft, who said on Friday that he would resign on April 11, was also fired on Monday.
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On Friday, Ibtihal Abusaad interrupted a speech by Mustafa Suleiman, the company’s head of artificial intelligence, at a ceremony held in Washington to mark the 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding.
She said to Solomon: Shame on you. You claim to be focused on using AI for good, but Microsoft is selling AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty thousand people have been killed and Microsoft is empowering this genocide in our region.
She added: Your hands are stained with blood. All of Microsoft is stained with blood.
Agrawal also interrupted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s speech at another event held on Friday and then wrote in an email to the company’s executives: Over the past year and a half, I’ve learned a lot about Microsoft’s growing role in the military industry.
He added that Microsoft is a “partner in crime” as “a manufacturer of digital weapons that enable apartheid and genocide,” and “we are all complicit by working for this company.”