{"id":17815,"date":"2026-05-20T14:47:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/ai-engineer-says-google-unfairly-sacked-him-after-he-protested-against-work-for-israel-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T14:47:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:47:33","slug":"ai-engineer-says-google-unfairly-sacked-him-after-he-protested-against-work-for-israel-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/ai-engineer-says-google-unfairly-sacked-him-after-he-protested-against-work-for-israel-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"AI engineer says Google unfairly sacked him after he protested against work for Israel – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: Employment tribunal claim says worker lost his job after distributing leaflets throughout London office
Google is facing a legal challenge from an AI engineer who claims he was unfairly dismissed after he protested against its work for the Israeli government, in the latest sign of growing concern about the social and ethical impacts of AI.
The engineer distributed flyers around Google DeepMind\u2019s London<\/a> offices, which read \u201cGoogle provides military AI to forces committing genocide\u201d and asking colleagues: \u201cIs your paycheck worth this?\u201d He also emailed colleagues about Google\u2019s 2025 decision to drop a promise not to pursue weapons that harm people and surveillance violating international norms and urged them to unionise.
According to the claim filed with the UK\u2019s employment tribunal, the worker alleges that Google<\/a> discriminated against his belief that no one should be complicit in war crimes and that by emailing and leafleting colleagues he was acting as a whistleblower. He claims he was laid off in September following meetings with a manager <\/strong>after which Google concluded he had resigned, which he denies.
Google DeepMind disputed his account. A spokesperson said it \u201cdoes not accurately reflect the facts\u201d.
The engineer, who is of Palestinian heritage, told the Guardian that the job in a frontier AI research lab had been \u201ca childhood dream\u201d but his feelings changed as Google signed more deals. Requesting anonymity, he said he felt \u201cterrible\u201d, because \u201cyou were going in every day and you feel like you are, you\u2019re betraying humanity and your people\u201d.
It is understood that Google\u2019s position is that it would not fire an employee for expressing opinions or engaging in constructive discourse in line with its company policy or treat unionised workers differently. He had urged colleagues to join United Tech and Allied Workers, a branch of the Communication Workers Union.
He is one of many Google workers worried about the multitrillion dollar company\u2019s AI being used by national governments\u2019 defence and intelligence operations. An insider at DeepMind said the 2025 change to Google\u2019s AI principles fuelled staff concern.
\u201cI know of at least 10 people who have quit as a matter of principle,\u201d they said. \u201cA lot of early AI researchers were idealistic about the idea of AI benefiting humanity \u2013 language the company liked to use. But when the AI really started working and the tech was worth real money they became dispirited at the less ethical uses to which it is now being put \u2013 and not a lot for the cure-for-cancer-type of problems.\u201d
Another insider said: \u201cMany of us do not oppose the use of AI in the military in all cases, but oppose irresponsible use, or misuse by anti-democratic actors\u201d. They said there were \u201cvery justified worries that AI can be a powerful technology to enable and empower authoritarianism, including in the US\u201d.
There have been protests over Google and Amazon\u2019s $1.2bn cloud computing deal with the Israeli government, which Israeli officials credited, during the Gaza conflict, with enabling \u201cphenomenal things [to] happen in combat, which constitute a significant part of victory\u201d.
Last month hundreds of Google workers also called for a bar on the US government using the company\u2019s AI for classified defence work<\/a>, saying they wanted the technology to be used to \u201cbenefit humanity\u201d not \u201cin inhumane or extremely harmful ways\u201d.
However, Google signed an AI deal with the Pentagon after Anthropic declined to remove \u200bguardrails<\/a> preventing its AI being used for autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance. Google said it was committed to the consensus<\/a> that AI should not be used for such things \u201cwithout appropriate human oversight\u201d.
The employment dispute was launched amid growing signs of public resistance against AI. In recent weeks mentions of the technology have been met with boos<\/a> at US college commencement ceremonies. Google\u2019s former chief executive Eric Schmidt was booed by graduates at Arizona State University on Friday when he said AI will \u201ctouch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have\u201d. Polling in Great Britain released on Monday showed one in three university students fear AI will wipe out jobs so rapidly that it will lead to social unrest<\/a>.
Rosa Curling, the co-executive director at Foxglove, a tech justice campaign group that is supporting the employment tribunal case, said of the ex-employee: \u201cHe tried to restore the ethical policies on conflict and surveillance which Google abandoned last year. Instead of listening to his warnings, the firm hit back against this important act of internal whistleblowing by sacking him.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Exclusive: Employment tribunal claim says worker lost his job after distributing leaflets throughout London officeGoogle is facing a legal challenge from an AI engineer who claims he was unfairly dismissed after he protested against its work for the Israeli government, in the latest sign of growing concern about the social and ethical impacts of AI.The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}