this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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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.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 75 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Best advice ever!

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 40 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Microsoft: has town hall

Also Microsoft: "approved opinions only!"

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] crazyminner@lemmy.ml 39 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Only five people at Microsoft gave enough fucks to protest. It should have been all of them. They should strike for fucks sakes.

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] GeekySalsa@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Many Microsoft employees are on Visas. So they can't really risk losing their jobs as they'd risk deportation. I suspect this is one of the reasons why big tech companies hire so many workers on visas tbh.

[–] But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

If you worked on creating Ai sorry but you must have known it would eventually be used for evil

[–] RedSnt 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Exactly: "Let's make something that removes the human decision making from the process.. Huh, it's evil?!"

[–] vintageballs@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago

There is no causality there.

[–] vintageballs@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you worked on smithing knives sorry but you must have known eventually someone would get stabbed

If you worked on building cars sorry but you must have known eventually someone would drive one into a protest

If you worked on producing painkillers sorry but you must have known eventually someone would trigger an opioid epidemic for their personal gain

....

A tool is a tool. Regulation and responsibility determine the associated dangers.

Come on now, Ai is on a whole other level than throat things. It would be like me making a robot that stabs things then crying cause someone used it to stab people

[–] RalziTech@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] nocteb@feddit.org 7 points 2 months ago

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!

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Dictators gonna dictate.