Key points
- Israeli military employs AI-enabled weapons in Gaza
- Microsoft among tech providers to Israeli military
- US tech giants also accused of “complicity in Genocide”
ISLAMABAD: US tech giant Microsoft has fired two software engineers who protested the company’s AI technology supply to the Israeli military.
Ibtihal Aboussad, a software engineer in the company’s AI division who is based in Canada, was fired Monday over “just cause, wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty,” according to one of the documents.
Another Microsoft software engineer, Vaniya Agrawal, had said she would resign from the company on April 11. But Microsoft terminated her role Monday, according to CNBC.
The company wrote that it “has decided to make your resignation immediately effective today.”
The protest
At Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebration on Friday, Ibtihal Aboussad, a software engineer in the company’s artificial intelligence division, interrupted the event with a message: Stop allowing the Israeli military to use Microsoft’s AI products.
At the time, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman was delivering a speech.
“Mustafa, shame on you,” the employee, Ibtihal Aboussad, said as she walked towards the stage at the event in Redmond, Washington. “You claim that you care for using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty thousand people have died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”
READ ALSO: Israel’s AI Use in Gaza Normalises Civilian Killings with Big Tech Complicity
At a separate Microsoft event with executives Friday, Agrawal interrupted a speech by Nadella with a similar protest and also sent an email to executives afterward, according to the Anadolu news agency.
Agrawal similarly expressed her concerns in an email, criticising Microsoft’s involvement in the military-industrial complex and labeling the company “complicit” in supporting surveillance, apartheid, and genocide.
A Microsoft spokesperson said on Friday: “We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard. Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate.”
Use of AI
The Israeli military employs AI to analyse intelligence, intercept communications and surveillance data for signs of suspicious behaviour and track enemy movements.
US tech giants such as Amazon, Intel, and others have also been accused of complicity in genocide.
Over 50,700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children. Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
