Microsoft Sacks Employee Who Interrupted Satya Nadella’s Speech

A Microsoft worker who interrupted a speech by CEO Satya Nadella has been fired. Software engineer Joe Lopez shouted in protest towards the tech large for supplying the Israeli army with know-how that has been allegedly used within the struggle in Gaza, in response to a report in New York Post.

Mr Nadella was on the stage for a couple of minutes when Lopez began shouting, “Free Palestine!” however the latter continued his keynote, ignoring the protester.

“Satya, how about you present how Microsoft is killing Palestinians. How about you present how Israeli struggle crimes are powered by Azure?” Lopez could possibly be heard shouting earlier than being ushered out of a corridor contained in the Seattle convention centre.

Shortly after Lopez’s interruption, he despatched an e mail to 1000’s of Microsoft staff, telling them he was “shocked by the silence” of the management. He additionally disputed the corporate’s claims about how its Azure cloud computing platform was utilized in Gaza.

“Leadership rejects our claims that Azure know-how is getting used to focus on or hurt civilians in Gaza,” stated Lopez within the e mail.

Lopez just isn’t the one engineer to name out Microsoft for its insurance policies. Former Microsoft engineer Vaniya Agrawal and fellow ex-employee Hossam Nasr additionally interrupted a session on AI safety in the course of the Build 2025 convention.

Ms Agrawal, who was fired shortly after her April protest, has develop into a visual face of tech-sector dissent, sharing ongoing protest imagery from Build 2025 on social media.

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Did Microsoft assist Israel?

In a current weblog put up, Microsoft acknowledged it had offered the Israeli army with software program, skilled companies, Azure cloud storage, and Azure AI companies, together with language translation. According to the corporate, these companies have been used to help in efforts to find and rescue Israeli hostages.

Microsoft additionally emphasised that it had important oversight and accredited some requests whereas denying others. The tech large stated it didn’t discover any proof that its Azure platform and AI applied sciences have been used to focus on or hurt folks in Gaza,

Microsoft’s involvement within the battle has raised issues amongst human rights teams, who fear that AI techniques could be flawed and susceptible to errors, probably resulting in the deaths of harmless folks.