Referring to the war in Gaza, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, said that Muslims and Arabs working in the tech industry are hesitant to talk about recent events for fear of reprisals.
"The Muslim and Arab (especially Palestinian) colleagues in the tech community I speak to are often uncomfortable talking about recent events for fear of retaliation and the possibility of damaging their careers," Sam Altman said on the X platform, formerly Twitter.
Altman urged the tech industry to be empathetic to members of these communities.
When asked by a user what he thinks about what the Jewish community is going through, Altman said, "I am a Jew. I believe that antisemitism is an important and growing problem in the world. I see a lot of people in our industry defending me, which I appreciate very much, but I see it much less for Muslims."
Human rights defenders point to the rapid rise of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the US and elsewhere in the world since October 7.
As the Israeli offensive on Gaza enters its third month, more than 22,000 Palestinians, or 1 percent of the population of 2.3 million, have been killed, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The number of people wounded in the Israeli offensive has reached nearly 60,000, some of them amputees.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported last month that in the two months since the start of the war, Islamophobic and prejudice-motivated attacks against Palestinians and Arabs in this country increased by 172 percent compared to the same period last year.
