On Sunday, Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla criticized Stanford students who walked out during Alphabet Inc.
(NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google CEO Sundar Pichai's commencement address, calling their protest "idiotic" and "selfish." Stanford Graduation Walkout The disruption took place Sunday at Stanford University's 135th commencement ceremony, where more than 20,000 attendees gathered, including thousands of graduates, reported Fortune.
Pichai began speaking, about 100 to 200 students stood, exited the venue, waved Palestinian flags and chanted "Free Palestine." The protest was organized by student groups including Students for Justice in Palestine and No Tech for Apartheid, which accused major tech firms of contributing to military and surveillance systems.
In a statement, protesters said, "We don't need another tech billionaire to tell us how to get rich off of the killing and surveillance of Palestinians." Their criticism has centered on Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud and AI contract involving Google and the Israeli government, as well as additional contracts with U.S. agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.
Khosla Responds To Protest Khosla responded on X, calling the students' actions "biased, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish." He added they were ignoring "the bottom 3 billion people on this planet that could benefit from AI" while focusing on what he described as "misinformed selfish self-interest." The stupidity of these @Stanford students to take the greatest opportunity for equality in humanity ever and to really free humanity and go walk out on @google and @sundarpichai that's pioneered that.
