Microsoft employees removed from town hall for protesting AI contracts with Israeli military
Microsoft employees removed from town hall for protesting AI contracts with Israeli military
Five Microsoft employees were removed during a company town hall meeting after staging a protest against the company’s contracts supplying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services to the Israeli occupation military.
The demonstration took place on Monday, following an Associated Press (AP) investigation that revealed Microsoft and OpenAI’s advanced AI models had been utilised by the Israeli occupation military to select bombing targets in recent attacks against Gaza and Lebanon.
Isn't that nice! Having a moral dilemma to decide which hospital to bomb? Just let AI decide! It's not your fault anymore just press the button!
Dictators gonna dictate.
Only five people at Microsoft gave enough fucks to protest. It should have been all of them. They should strike for fucks sakes.
In my experience the majority of tech workers don’t give a fuck about the moral implications of their work. They often justify it with “if I don’t do it someone else will.”
Source: am tech worker, see it all the time
"Once the rockets go up, who care where they come down"
I don't blame them for protesting. Yeah, admittedly AI is cool n' all, but you don't need to encourage an entire military to get in on it.
No matter where you are in an organization, unless you're csuite, you're nothing. Always remember that. You do not get a say, your opinion is tolerated at best. I've known people at MSFT for decades and they think they're opinion matters. It doesn't. Tomorrow some exec will come in and stomp on you. Work to live, don't live to work. Them saying this is good, but I like to remind people that they won't care. Money talks.
as long as people are applying to MS position jobs, the employees protesting means very little. and you see what companies did to the job review sites, sued them into being astroturfed.
Best advice ever!
Imagine thinking you have any moral high ground but work for a massive corporation.
Yeah fuck the 2+ million people working for big tech. They don't deserve work unless it's for a genuine, good-hearted startup.
People have families to feed. How long are you willing to go without income before you consider Amazon or Meta? How long do your morals hold up before you're facing eviction. It's super easy to hold to them and judge others when you're fully employed, but buddy I gotta tell you, I've been laid off twice in 3 years, and I stared down losing my house or taking a job at big tech. I was lucky that a smaller company came in last second and I landed there, but I hold zero ill will to those who work there.
Most of them have no assumptions to what they do, but individuals need to feed their families, to provide a roof over their heads, they have kids who need college paid for or medical insurance. You judge them, but I question what you would do in the same position. If you were facing losing your home and you had Amazon sitting there offering more money then you've ever made - how long would you hold onto those morals?
I don't even expect an answer. I don't expect it to be truthful.
Microsoft: has town hall
Also Microsoft: "approved opinions only!"
Company Town Halls are "we listen to you" theatre.
Modern large companies behave towards their employees the same way they behave towards their customers: they use marketing to influence them into doing what's best for the C-suite, the Board and (usually) shareholders.
In Tech specifically this kind of crap has been common since the 90s even in Startups (as part of the "pay them with hope, sense of belonging and pride rather than money" technique), though the big Tech companies are the most extreme in this kind of stuff.
At most large companies, this isn't too uncommon. Town Halls are not the same as town halls elected officials might stage.
I think that should be expected given the governing structure of almost all large companies, because they're dictatorships. Employees have no say over who's in leadership, and can be fired more or less without recourse. You wouldn't expect a town hall in Russia or North Korea to allow dissent, would you?
If you worked on creating Ai sorry but you must have known it would eventually be used for evil
Exactly: "Let's make something that removes the human decision making from the process.. Huh, it's evil?!"