Bhavish Aggarwal, the CEO of Ola, on Thursday sparked a debate and discussion with his recent post on X (formerly Twitter), slamming the job seeking social media handle LinkedIn after it removed his post discussing the use of gender pronouns, which he referred to as 'pronoun illness'.
The job seeking platform recently removed Aggarwal's post for violating its community guidelines and the post was flagged for not aligning with LinkedIn's policies regarding professional conduct and discourse.
Aggarwal's response
In response to the removal of his post, Aggarwal criticised the linkedIn platform, accusing its AI of imposing a political ideology on Indian users.
In his X post, wrote, "Dear @LinkedIn this post of mine was about YOUR AI imposing a political ideology on Indian users that’s unsafe, sinister."
"Rich of you to call my post unsafe! This is exactly why we need to build own tech and AI in India. Else we’ll just be pawns in others political objectives," he added to the post.
He argued in the post that the platform's action were 'unsafe' and 'sinister', and highlighted the need for India to develop its own technology and AI to avoid being manipulated by external political agendas.
Netizens reaction
Aggarwal's post sparked debate over the use of gender pronouns and the role of AI in the social media platform with many netizens reacting to it.
"Tech should unite, not divide. AI has the potential to drive significant economic growth in India We need to invest in AI education and training to ensure that our workforce is equipped to take advantage of the opportunities presented by AI," an X user responded to Aggarwal's X post.
"Once upon a time, only Royalty was allowed to use the pronoun, We," added another user.
"India's own AI '@krutrim' is just awesome and we stand with you in promoting ethical AI practices and user safety @bhash," wrote a user.
Background of the incident
Aggarwal in his LinkedIn post published earlier criticised gender pronouns and asked LinkedIn AI to write a bio about him to which the chatbot referred to him as 'they' instead of 'he'.
Aggarwal then shared the screenshot of it in his post and wrote, "Most of us in India have no clue about politics of this pronouns illness. People do it because it’s become expected in our corporate culture, especially MNCs. Better to send this illness back where it came from. Our culture has always had respect for all. No need for new pronouns."
Thereafter, the post received many responses from the netizens, sparking a debate on the social media platform.
