ANALYSIS – Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen slammed the ongoing issues at Alphabet Inc.'s Google after a group of leftist employees staged sit-ins and protests over the company's $1.2 billion contract with Israel amid the ongoing war with Hamas.
The pro-Hamas activists even occupied the office of the Google Cloud CEO.
Andreessen has also backed Elon Musk‘s concerns about the potential dangers of AI, which ironically is what the activists at Google say they are concerned about – Israel's military use of AI.
“The company is literally overrun by employee mobs, Chinese spies are walking AI chip designs out the door, and they turn the Founding Fathers and the Nazis black,” Andreessen said in a recent online post, reported by Benzinga, referring to Google.
His last reference is about the Google Gemini AI issue which generated false black images of the Founding Fathers as well as its own co-founders, among other major historical figures.
And Elon Musk's response on X was classic. Simply a laughing with tears emoji. Which I'm sure means agreement.
His comments align with those of Musk, who has been vocal about the potential dangers of AI being used for political correctness.
Now, Google, a major player in the AI space, has been facing internal dissent over its cloud contract with the Israeli government. Employees claim the Israeli Defense Ministry uses Google services; however Google says its contract is with other branches of the Israeli government.
Employee morale, too, has hit an all-time low at the company, with ex-Googler Ian “Hixie” Hickinson criticizing CEO Sundar Pichai for displaying a “lack of visionary leadership” and disinterest in maintaining the ethos of Google that made it a successful company.
Meanwhile, the radical sit-in by spoiled Gen Z didn't last long. Nine employees, wearing the color coordinated t-shirts and 2020 COVID face masks, were arrested for occupying Google's offices in New York and California Tuesday night after an eight-hour sit-in.
The Verge reported:
Workers in the New York office captured the arrests on video. Around 9:45PM on Tuesday, nearly eight hours into the protest, a group of police officers and a man who appears to work at Google approached the four workers remaining in the New York office and told them to exit the building. “We're asking you to leave again for the last time,” the man said after informing the workers they've been placed on administrative leave and their access to the building has been revoked.
After the protesters refuse to leave, the police tell them they'll be arrested if they don't comply. “Listen, we'll let you walk out the door right now — it's a non-issue if you're willing to go. If not, you're going to be arrested for trespassing,” a New York City police officer tells the protesters.
The Sunnyvale arrests occurred around the same time. Workers at the Sunnyvale office were livestreaming their protest on Twitch and captured the moment they were arrested. In the video, a man who appears to be a security guard asks the workers to leave voluntarily and threatens to call the police. Later, six police officers enter the office to arrest the five workers.
Anna Kowalczyk, the external communications manager for Google Cloud, said the protests were “part of a longstanding campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don't work at Google. A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a couple of our locations. Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action.”
Following the arrests, the company fired 28 employees in California and New York, the company said.
According to Business insider, a Google spokesperson said: “Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action. These employees were put on administrative leave, and their access to our systems was cut.”
Chris Rackow, Google's head of security, wrote in an internal memo on Wednesday that the protests were “extremely disruptive” and that they “made coworkers feel threatened.”
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