Seattle tech conference faces controversy after workshop claims Israel committing 'genocide' in Gaza

A Seattle tech conference is now embroiled in controversy after one of the presentations accused Israel of genocide. The annual Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) bills itself as “the premier annual computer vision event.” The event, which happened last week in Seattle, included “several co-located workshops and short courses.”

According to the Jewish News Syndicate, Yitzhak Ben-Shabat noticed a slide in a presentation during the Workshop on Responsible Data which featured the header “How has CPR research contributed to genocide in Palestine,” and listed Israeli and international companies that were alleged to be participating in “genocide.”

Shabat posted on X, “I was deeply offended by a slide in a recent talk at #CVPR2024 that falsely accused my country of genocide. Such baseless political statements have no place in our scientific community. Let’s keep our focus on advancing science and leave politics at the door. @CVPR.”

The image listed Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Northup Grumman, General Motors, and other companies as complicit in "genocide." An employee of Amazon, 28-year-old Sasha Troufanov, is currently being held hostage by Palestinian terrorists after he was abducted on Oct. 7. Local activists have previously targeted the tech giant for having subsidiaries in Israel. The thread erupted into a cesspool of antisemitic comments.

Though the name of the presenter was not disclosed, a schedule of the workshop listed Dr. William Agnew as giving a keynote address on "Mapping the Computer Vision Surveillance and Weapons Pipeline." A paper co-authored by Agnew while he was at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington was titled "The Surveillance AI Pipeline" Organizers of the event did not return requests for comment.