On MicrosoftThe celebration of the 50th anniversary on Friday Software engineer in the company's artificial intelligence department interrupted this event with a message: Stop allowing the Israeli military to use AI Microsoft products.
At that time, the general director of Microsoft AI Mustafa Suleyman gave a speech.
“Mustafa, shame,” said the employee, Ibtihal aboussad, approached the stage at a party at Redmond, Washington. “You claim that you care about using AI for good, but Microsoft sells weapons to Israeli military. Fifty thousand people died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”
Suleyman replied, recognizing the protester.
Aboussad continued: “Behad.
An employee who is working on the Microsoft AI speech recognition engine team has been quickly escorted.
Shortly after the break, aboussad sent E -Mail, which was viewed by CNBC, to Suleyman and other Microsoft management, including CEO Satya nadellaFinance head Amy Hood, head of Carolina Dybeck Happe and Brad Smith, president of the company.
“I talked today because after finding out that my org was driving the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice,” wrote Aboussad We -mail. “This is particularly true when I was witnessing how Microsoft tried to suppress and suppress the opposition of my colleagues who tried to raise this issue. Over the past year and a half, our Arab, Palestinian and Muslim community in Microsoft has been silenced, intimidated, harassed, and Doksxed, impunity with microsoft. Falls to deaf, and simply from them, with two employees.
Microsoft did not immediately answer at the request for comment.
In recent months, AI companies are retreating in connection with the use of their products by the army and conclude contracts with the giants of the defense industry and the Defense Department.
In November, anthropic and defense contractor Palantir announced a partnership with Amazon Internet services providing American intelligence agencies and defensive access to AI Claude Anthropic models. Palantir has recently signed a new five -year contract worth up to $ 100 million to expand American military access to the Warfare Maven AI program.
Opeli and Anduril announced a partnership enabling a technology company to defend on the implementation of advanced AI systems for the “national security mission”. AND last monthScale AI concluded a contract with the Department of Defense with the flagship AI agent program worth many millions of dollars.
Aboussad wrote in an e-mail that after starting work on AI platforms, Microsoft was excited about contributing to “the latest AI technology and its applications for the good of humanity.” But she wrote: “I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government.”
“I have not signed up to write a code that violates human rights,” wrote aboussad, adding a link to A “No azure for apartheid“Petition.
During a separate Microsoft event with the management of the same day, another software engineer Vaniya Agrawal interrupted Nadella's speech with a similar protest.
Then Agrawal wrote We -mail to the management that he would give up the company.
“You may have seen how I got up today to call saty during his speech on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Microsoft,” she wrote We -mail, which was browsed by CNBC. “Over the past 1.5 years, I have realized the growing role of Microsoft in the military and industrial complex.”
Agrawal said that Microsoft is “complicit” as “a producer of digital weapons who supplies supervision, apartheid and genocide.”
She added that “working for this company, we are all comprehensive.”
“Even if we do not work directly at AI or Azure, our work is a silent support, and our corporate climbing only drives the system,” wrote Agrawal. Contained a call for action to sign the same petition.