Microsoft’s AI conference derailed by back-to-back protests over Israel ties

Microsoft’s annual Build conference in Seattle has been met with major setbacks from protests over claims of power military operations in Gaza. Two days in a row, the meetings have been disrupted by people shouting “Free Palestine.”

The protests are part of a growing campaign called No Azure for Apartheid. It is targeting Microsoft’s cloud contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defense. 

The group has been protesting for more than a year. The Azure cloud software was used by the Israeli Air Force’s Ofek Unit to keep track of databases of possible targets for deadly airstrikes and by Israelis to spy on Palestinians. +972 Magazine says that leaked papers also show that Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel.

The three major disruptions in Microsoft’s meetings

The first disruption was caused by Joe Lopez, a Microsoft hardware engineer who worked on parts of Azure, the company’s cloud-computing platform. Security quickly led him out of the Build conference after speaking out against the company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella.

“Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians,” Lopez yelled. “How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”

Afterward, Lopez sent an all-staff email explaining his decision to stage a protest. The email read, “As one of the largest companies in the world, Microsoft has immeasurable power to do the right thing: demand an end to this senseless tragedy, or we will cease our technological support for Israel.”

The second one happened as Microsoft’s head of CoreAI, Jay Parikh, was on stage discussing the company’s Azure AI Foundry efforts. A Palestinian tech worker interrupted his keynote to protest against the same issue.

When Parikh went back to his keynote, he stumbled over his words. Then, one of his Microsoft coworkers came on stage to continue talking about the company’s work with AI developers. 

In addition, last month, two former Microsoft employees interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary event. One of them called Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI CEO, a “war profiteer” and told the company to “stop using AI for genocide in our region.” 

Microsoft looks into how its tech is being used in the war in Gaza 

This second protest comes soon after Microsoft said that it had recently done an internal study and hired an outside firm, but didn’t say what firm it was, to look into how its technology is being used in the war in Gaza. 

The company said that there is no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of their other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with their terms of service or their AI Code of Conduct.

Microsoft explained that its relationship with Israel’s Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is structured as a standard commercial relationship.

However, Lopez didn’t buy it: “Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza. 

Microsoft is set to host  xAI, Meta Platforms, and others 

Microsoft announced it would host new AI models made by Elon Musk’s xAI, Meta Platforms, and European startups Mistral and Black Forest Labs in its data centers. The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, said that the new products from xAI, Meta, and others will have the same reliability promises as the OpenAI models that Microsoft hosts.

“That’s just a game-changer in terms of how you think about models and model provisioning,” Nadella told conference attendees during a keynote address. “It’s exciting for us as developers to be able to mix and match and use them all.” The company also showed off a new AI tool that can do software coding tasks by itself.

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