- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
A Microsoft employee disrupted the company’s 50th anniversary event to protest its use of AI.
“Shame on you,” said Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, speaking directly to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate when Microsoft is killing children. Shame on you all.”
Sources at Microsoft tell The Verge that shortly after Aboussad was ushered out of Microsoft’s event, she sent an email to a number of email distribution lists that contain hundreds or thousands of Microsoft employees. Here is Aboussad’s email in full:
This is what happens when you read and watch hamas’ war propaganda online.
There are photos and videos of russian soldiers dying. Does that give ukraine the fault for this war?
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Children are not soilders. I don’t think anyone is criticising israel for killing hamas leader or soilders, but bombing hospital, kill children, journalist, and UN shelter are not okay.
Whether terrorist attack justify a full scale invasion is debatable, but interfering with humanitarian effort, killing children and non-combative unit is not.
Hamas does rely on child soldiers.
Yes, and journalism soilders, UN shelter soilders, and the humanitarian aid workers from World Central Kitchen from U.S., U.K., and Australia, believe it or not, also hamas soldiers.
The UN palestine workers (or at least some) were proven to be associated to hamas.
For the rest I need sources.
‘Source for thee, but none for me’ is an interesting rhetorical strategy. Let’s see how it works out.
Just google that shit bruv
The UN even admitted to it and kicked out some of their workers
What the fuck are you on about? I’m commenting on your demand for sources while also providing none for numerous claims. Interesting strategy. You must have studied Plato.
Hahahah you sir, ate. chefkiss
So it’s okay to kill children, because they might be Hamas? Do you hear yourself?
When parents knowingly let their children play near enemy soldiers they’re stupid…
You see an article about a major tech company collaborating with a major world government, and you think the terrorist resistance cells living in dirt are the ones more capable of disseminating propaganda?
What if you’re the one who’s consumed the propaganda? Where’s the money, Larry?
I’m going to point you to the other comment I replied to here.
lol your other comment also just says “i wont engage”. you say the conversation is emotional but your replies have nothing but grandstanding. ive heard a lot of crazy unsubstantiated claims around Israel-Palestine, but the idea that accusations of innocents being murdered is hamas propaganda is possibly the craziest. what channels are the propagandists going through? whose support does hamas have to disseminate this propaganda? are we done with russian bots now we’re onto saudi bots?
i will gladly examine the sources of information and challenge my biases, but you’re gonna have to give me more to work with. we have a LOT of info on childrens hospitals being bombed, aid workers being executed, major US news outlets softballing their coverage, etc. What basis do we have to believe your claims? cuz i got news for you: saying that it was okay to bomb an entire children’s hospital because it was full of terrorists, that is the propaganda. hamas using civilians as a shield, israel blowing up civilians anyway, how can you point fingers at one and say “that’s fine”?
Hamas literally rely on people from other countries to support their terrorism and prevent israel from acting. Hamas themselves are too weak to win this. All the sad social media posts and shit - all intentional, all manipulative. Why don’t you go to palestine and bring justice yourself instead of complaining on the internet?
All the while they’re themselves engaging in a genocide on israelis. Read up on that. Hundreds of experts around the planet agree on that.
Why should israel play fair when hamas doesn’t? Hamas hides in hospitals, undeniably.
This is what happens when you read Israeli war propaganda online.
Genocide apologists are the absolute worst scum.
I would try to write up well-worded arguments backed up with valid sources, but there’s no point. No matter how well I try to back up my arguments with valid sources, all I get is emotionally biased hate with no content so I’ve given up on that because it’s not worth the effort. Feel free to give me articles from unbiased sources.
I do admit that israel has done the odd shitty thing but it by far isn’t as bad as pro-palestinian brainwashed people make it out to be.
I want to also ask you to propose an alternative response to what hamas is doing after reading up on how they have acted in the past.
The odd shitty thing? Israel’s been attacking innocent civilians for well over a year now. Hamas is shitty, but there is nothing that warrrants the level of destruction Isreal’s done to Gaza.
Hamas abusing their own people leads to things like this
😂😂R u dumb?
Explain hamas child soldiers and human shields then.
‘Oh these people are being bad to their own people, lets just bomb all of them into the stone ages’
Nah dude
If hamas don’t play fair, why should Israel?
🙏 seek help
Ok child murder supporter
Ok
No argument, no sources - congratulations
I would try to write up well-worded arguments backed up with valid sources, but…
I’d like to kindly remind you to piss off with your hypocrisy
If you want argument you’ll get an argument; if not, then go back to your echo chamber (It’s located right next to the chamber pot from which you enjoy your daily feed)
P.S. My sincerest apologies for the verbosity of the directions, but you seem to need it since you lack any
Haven’t received any arguments yet :shrug:
This is weird. What is actually wrong with you? Go and touch some grass.
?
You think that Israel would be Ukraine in this analogy?
No analogy has 1:1 match but I think you get my point.
Which particular set of Israeli policies are you supporting here?
The 10-15 civilian deaths per strike on a possible low level Hamas supporter?
The continued “accidental” killing of medical staff, including Red Cross and Red Crescent workers, and journalists?
The idea of turning off water and electricity from all of Gaza as a valid response?
The escalation of illegal settlement and theft of Palestinian property and land in the West Bank, with IDF support no less?
Or the use of the Hannibal Protocol against Israeli Civilians on October 8th by IDF forces?
Or do you just not think it is incumbent on the one with greater power and strength to offer the olive branch first if peace is truly desires? And in fact would rather the Palestinian people are smeared across an enlarged Israel?
Brave as fuck. It’s a call for all of us to do a little more. What’s happening in our world shouldn’t be the norm anymore.
Microsoft will sell US citizens out in a second when the government tells them to. They will use their AI to round us up without batting an eye. They can not be trusted anymore.
Microsoft is now a threat to democracy and human existence. They are already working against us with governments. This is the tipping point that no one will hear about.
There is too much at stake and they are too big to fail. The government will viciously take down anyone spreading the truth. Continuing to support Microsoft is now a death sentence to democracy.
Username checks out.
Reading some comments here, I want to leave a gentle reminder to my fellow redditfugees: the block user option is your friend. Curate your feed or get fed.
When you see an aggressively oppositional account dropping shittastic hot takes, of course you can always engage and Have The Conversation if you want. You know what happens after you reply: the person likely leaves a bot to mess with your good intentions, raise your blood pressure, make you depressed and waste your time. Or maybe you successfully Prove Them Wrong and they change the goalposts, or wander off to needle someone else.
We know by now, the more we engage, the more online space they get to fill with accelerationist Content.
So just click the account name, then click the block button, and you’ll never see their viral brainrot again. Nobody needs to know; no need to announce it. If your freezepeach philosophy prevents that, maybe just upvote one of the replies you agree with and move on. If you’re on mobile, you can tag the account through Voyager etc instead of blocking, if you prefer.
However you manage it, removing doomscroller ragebait from your Feed is worth doing.
Copying their post over (with minimal formatting, unfortunately) for anyone that doesn’t care to go to that site (and to make sure it doesn’t randomly disappear)
r/self 5 mo. ago walkandtalkk You’re being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they’re making you more hateful and depressed.
(I wrote this post in March and posted it on r/GenZ. However, a few people messaged me to say that the r/GenZ moderators took it down last week, though I’m not sure why. Given the flood of divisive, gender-war posts we’ve seen in the past five days, and several countries’ demonstrated use of gender-war propaganda to fuel political division in multiple countries, I felt it was important to repost this. This post was written for a U.S. audience, but the implications are increasingly global.)
TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online. But you almost certainly don’t how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you – individually-- angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks’ goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners – especially young ones – to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.
And you probably don’t realize how well it’s working on you.
This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it’s much scarier than you think.
How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another
In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.
There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.
As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia’s online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month – the majority of U.S. social media users.
Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States
In 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, founded the Internet Research Agency (the IRA) in St. Petersburg. It was the Russian government’s first coordinated facility to disrupt U.S. society and politics through social media.
Here’s what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA’s efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:
>Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.
In 2014, the IRA and other Russian networks began establishing fake U.S. activist groups on social media. By 2015, hundreds of English-speaking young Russians worked at the IRA. Their assignment was to use those false social-media accounts, especially on Facebook and Twitter – but also on Reddit, Tumblr, 9gag, and other platforms – to aggressively spread conspiracy theories and mocking, ad hominem arguments that incite American users.
In 2017, U.S. intelligence found that Blacktivist, a Facebook and Twitter group with more followers than the official Black Lives Matter movement, was operated by Russia. Blacktivist regularly attacked America as racist and urged black users to rejected major candidates. On November 2, 2016, just before the 2016 election, Blacktivist’s Twitter urged Black Americans: “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote.”
Russia plays both sides – on gender, race, and religion
The brilliance of the Russian influence campaign is that it convinces Americans to attack each other, worsening both misandry and misogyny, mutual racial hatred, and extreme antisemitism and Islamophobia. In short, it’s not just an effort to boost the right wing; it’s an effort to radicalize everybody.
Russia uses its trolling networks to aggressively attack men. According to MIT, in 2019, the most popular Black-oriented Facebook page was the charmingly named “My Baby Daddy Aint Shit.” It regularly posts memes attacking Black men and government welfare workers. It serves two purposes: Make poor black women hate men, and goad black men into flame wars.
MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.
But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.
On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women’s March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement. Per the Times:
>More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans. >They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.
But the Russian PR teams realized that one attack worked better than the rest: They accused its co-founder, Arab American Linda Sarsour, of being an antisemite. Over the next 18 months, at least 152 Russian accounts regularly attacked Sarsour. That may not seem like many accounts, but it worked: They drove the Women’s March movement into disarray and eventually crippled the organization.
Russia doesn’t need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes. It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.
A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:
>It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore. It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.
As the New York Times reported in 2022,
>There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, [Russian disinformation] workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.
GOOD FOR THEM. I AM SO PROUD OF THEM
SHE needs to be DEPORTED to EL SALVADOR!
-Free Speech Loving CONservatives!
Actually in French we label dumbasses as “Les cons”. It doesn’t have the meaning of being sneaky or cunning, it just means they’re morons. Pretty fitting
I know it’s supposed to be a joke. Doesn’t seem worth it.
yeah I agree. I do my best to avoid hearing these words when they come from loathsome people. Parroting them, even in jest, still means those ideas are being amplified.
TL;DR: she works on the speech to text AI product on Azure, which is used by Israel for some of their operations.
Look, I understand her desire to stop fighting in Palestine, but by that logic, we should also be protesting every software and computer manufacturer.
By that logic, if it’s not practical to protest every single injustice in the world, we just shouldn’t bother.
I’d say genocide is a good place to start, wouldn’t you?
She’s mostly asking her coworkers to speak up.
We should.
The email the employee sent, apologies for any formatting errors:
Hi all, As you might have just seen on the livestream or witnessed in person, I disrupted the speech of Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman during the highly-anticipated 50th anniversary celebration. Here’s why. My name is Ibtihal, and for the past 3.5 years, I’ve been a software engineer on Microsoft’s AI Platform org. I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice. This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and suppress any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise this issue. For the past year and a half, our Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim community at Microsoft has been silenced, intimidated, harassed, and doxxed, with impunity from Microsoft. Attempts at speaking up at best fell on deaf ears, and at worst, led to the firing of two employees for simply holding a vigil. There was simply no other way to make our voices heard.
We are witnessing a genocide For the past 1.5 years, I’ve witnessed the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel. I’ve seen unspeakable suffering amidst Israel’s mass human rights violations - indiscriminate carpet bombings, the targeting of hospitals and schools, and the continuation of an apartheid state - all of which have been condemned globally by the UN, ICC, and ICJ, and numerous human rights organizations. The images of innocent children covered in ash and blood, the wails of mourning parents, and the destruction of entire families and communities have forever fractured me.
At the time of writing, Israel has resumed its full-scale genocide in Gaza, which has so far killed by some estimates over 300,000 Gazans in the past 1.5 year alone. Just days ago, it was revealed that Israel killed fifteen paramedics and rescue workers in Gaza, executing them “one by one,” before burying them in the sand – yet another horrific war crime. All the while, our “responsible” AI work powers this surveillance and murder. The United Nations and the International Court of Justice have concluded that this is a genocide, with the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.
We are Complicit When I moved to AI Platform, I was excited to contribute to cutting-edge AI technology and its applications for the good of humanity: accessibility products, translation services, and tools to “empower every human and organization to achieve more.” I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government, with the purpose of spying on and murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers, and entire civilian families. If I knew my work on transcription scenarios would help spy on and transcribe phone calls to better target Palestinians (source), I would not have joined this organization and contributed to genocide. I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights.
According to AP news, there is “a $133 million contract between Microsoft and Israel’s Ministry of Defense.”
“The Israeli military’s usage of Microsoft and OpenAI artificial intelligence spiked last March to nearly 200 times higher than before the week leading up to the Oct. 7 attack. The amount of data it stored on Microsoft servers doubled between that time and July 2024 to more than 13.6 petabytes.”
“The Israeli military uses Microsoft Azure to compile information gathered through mass surveillance, which it transcribes and translates, including phone calls, texts and audio messages, according to an Israeli intelligence officer who works with the systems. That data can then be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house targeting systems.” Microsoft AI also powers the most “sensitive and highly classified projects” for the Israeli military, including its “target bank” and the Palestinian population registry. Microsoft cloud and AI enabled the Israeli military to be more lethal and destructive in Gaza than they otherwise could.
Microsoft has also been providing software, cloud services, and consulting services to the Israeli military and government, totaling millions in profit. War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly mentioned his strong ties to Microsoft. A list of these contracts with the Israeli military and government can be found here: An Introduction to Microsoft’s Complicity in Apartheid and Genocide
In fact, Microsoft is so deeply connected to the Israeli military that it was just yesterday designated one of the priority boycott targets of the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) campaign.
Regardless of your political stances, is this the legacy we want to leave behind? Is working on deadly AI weapons something you can tell your children about? Do we want to be on the wrong side of history?
Even though your work could be unrelated to the cloud that the military uses, your work benefits the company and allows it to take on the contract. Regardless of your team, you serve a company that is arming the Israeli occupation. It is undeniable that part of your compensation, no matter how small, is being paid by genocide.
Whether you work on AI or not, you will be complicit if you do nothing. It is now OUR job to take a vocal stand against Microsoft AI’s involvement in crimes against humanity. This is why I decided to speak up today, and why I signed this important petition to demand Microsoft cut ties with genocide. And I urge you all to do the same.
Call to Action
Silence is complicity. But action always has a reaction, no matter how big or small. As workers for this company, we must make our voices heard, and demand that Microsoft does the right thing: stop selling technology to the Israeli military.
If you are also concerned about this news, and you also want your work to be used ethically, I urge you to take action: Sign the No Azure for Apartheid petition: We will not write code that kills. And join the campaign to add your voice to the growing number of concerned Microsoft employees. Join me in showing our discontent in this thread. If you also feel tricked into deploying weapons which target children and civilians, urge leadership (CC’ed) to drop these contracts.
Don’t stop speaking up. Urge SLT to drop these contracts at every opportunity. Start conversations with your co-workers about the points above - so many employees may not know!
Microsoft’s human rights statement prohibits retaliation against anyone who raises a human rights-related concern: Human rights statement | Microsoft CSR
Our company has precedents in supporting human rights, including divestment from apartheid South Africa and dropping contracts with AnyVision (Israeli facial recognition startup), after Microsoft employee and community protests. My hope is that our collective voices will motivate our AI leaders to do the same, and correct Microsoft’s actions regarding these human rights violations, to avoid a stained legacy. Microsoft Cloud and AI should stop being the bombs and bullets of the 21st century.
Sincerely, A concerned Microsoft employee
What’s the solution to lasting peace? Restore rule to the Ottomans or British?
One State. Simple
One state, immediately in the state of civil war where one side has access to the most money and the best weapons? I gave up on this idea after seeing the effects of this current war. Either one side will eliminate the other or a bigger country will rule both of them as if they are children incapable of running their own lives. Is there a reasonable plan for peace other than these?
You can’t bomb a place or rape its people into stability. We have 200 years of hard evidence for that (not that it was needed). Literally any other approach would be beneficial for everyone except the war profiteers
I don’t think their goal is stability. It is elimination. And the same would be true if the situation reversed. So either that’s what eventually happens or a bigger power steps in and rules them like children.
You need peace / security, a modicum of prosperity, and education / information from independent news. There are no shortcuts.
Basically both Israel and Palestine are fucked because of decades of neglect and neoliberal and racist policies.
I mean, it’s not like there wasn’t a technically-still-binding treaty for a 2-state solution, which would still be a working compromise for both sides (even though Israel would, by now, have to become Germany 2.0 in terms of self-awareness and lasting change to be even remotely trusted by its neighbors)… which gets completely ignored and pissed on by Israel…
Maybe give the decision to the people who resided in this land before the Ottomans or British put the intentionally divisive borders that they’d come up with?
How is that a reasonable approach? How would that solve anything?
I’m pretty sure most of those people are dead.
Yeah, there were never any wars in the middle east before the Ottomans or British came along. Right? Right!?
Thank you. Tried visiting the archive page but it blocked me and ironically enough wanted me to solve a captcha that’ll be used to train “AI.”
!lemmysilver
Thank you for voting. You can vote again in 24 hours. leaderboard
Braver than the troops
that woman has more balls than half the fucking country. I sure wish she won’t get fired or worse for telling the truth of what’s happening.
Ballsy move. I hope she’s okay.
LinkedIn just deleted her profile, I was following her yesterday: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ibtihalaboussad
Makes sense its owned by MS
Wow.
You’re sure she didn’t delete it herself due to the attention she was probably getting?
Of course their not sure. This is an internet forum. The account being gone must mean it was deleted. Honestly, she was probably getting so much bat shit crazy messages, she deleted it herself. That makes the most sense.
Could be she set it to private. It’s what I did when I left my last gig.
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Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
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IMO since they can’t even seem to wipe their own asses without us the rich will never be self sufficient or self sustaining on their own.
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Lmao. These are crazy billionaire pipe dreams.
Humans survive through community. Their wealth doesn’t mean shit.
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Or she set it to private because she was overwhelmed with the messages she was getting.
LinkedIn as in the website owned by Microsoft? You don’t say!
And Microsoft will now just make sure she vant find a job anywhere? You don’t say
Goes to prove that LinkedIn is just exactly like every other social media platform despite what many people seem to believe.
Also, Microsoft owns LinkedIn so that might have something to do with it.
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I applaud her for fighting against the ocean tide. Our clothes are made from slave/child labor as well as most of our electronics. Expecting fellow Microsoft employees who are very comfortable in their position to give that up because of AI killing people?
I absolutely hate how apathetic the world is. It should never be “that’s the way it is” because we, humans, let it get this far. Are corporations to be blamed, consumers, or both?
Who’s turn is it to pass the hot potato?
For AI? Corporations. No question.
Microsoft has to bundle its consumer AI products in with other licenses in order to achieve their frankly abysmal adoption rates. They also have recently significantly reduceded plans for further spending on datacenters, indicating that they might already see the writing on the wall.
OpenAI, the most successful AI “corp”, hemorages money to a mind boggling degree and actually loses money per query.
It’s not profitable or sustainable. The market forces, if left alone, would not provide enough demand to cover the astronimical costs. Companies with more money than god like Microsoft and now Softbank (although they are having to take out massive loans now) are burning astronomical piles of cash to prop it up.
The bravery of this women to speak up for injustice! No doubt she is going to “face consequences” for this disruption. Let’s wish her the best.
Salam Alaykum Ibtiahl Aboussad!
What a hero! I hope she is alright.
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