Microsoft has fired two employees who disrupted its 50th anniversary celebration to protest the company’s work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.
Ibtihal Aboussad, a software engineer at Microsoft’s Canadian headquarters in Toronto, shouted that the company sells “AI weapons” to the Israeli military, pointing to the deaths of 50,000 people in the region. Her protest forced Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman to pause his talk.
Aboussad was told she was being fired immediately during a call with a human resources representative on Monday. A second employee, Vaniya Agrawal, who had already given her two weeks notice, had her resignation made effective immediately by the company.
The protests come amid an investigation into Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform sale to Israel, which has been linked to AI models used in Israeli military programs.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-protest-employees-fired-israel-gaza-50th-anniversary-c5b3715fa1800450b8d0f639b492495e