The Uproar Over Microsoft’s Deals With Israel: What Have We Learned about the Gaza Attack and the Walmart Use of Artificial Intelligence?

Microsoft has been taken to task in recent weeks over its business dealings with the Israeli government specifically. The uproar over Microsoft contracts has to do with the bombardment of Gaza following the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attack. According to the Health Ministry of Gaza, there were more than 52,000 deaths in the current Israeli military operation, with some analysts estimating that as many as 109,000 people have been killed.

A Palestinian tech worker disrupted Microsofts head of CoreAI on the second day of Build and then, on Wednesday, two former Microsoft employees disrupted a session as well as a Microsoft executive inadvertently revealed internal messages about Walmart’s use of artificial intelligence.

Microsoft employees found out that any email with the terms “Palestine” or “Gaza” are temporarily prevented from being sent to recipients inside and outside the company. The No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) protest group reports that “dozens of Microsoft workers” have been unable to send emails with the words “‘Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide” in email subject lines or in the body of a message.

Sending email to a large number of employees about a topic they don’t work on is not appropriate. Microsoft has an established forum where employees can discuss politics, according to a statement from Frank Shaw. “Over the past couple of days, a number of politically focused emails have been sent to tens of thousands of employees across the company and we have taken measures to try and reduce those emails to those that have not opted in.”