Microsoft laid off the entire Ethics and Community team from the AI department. This decision Microsoft is left without a team dedicated to ensuring that AI principles are incorporated into product design, at a time when the company is leading the way in bringing AI tools into the mainstream. The action is part of the mass layoffs that saw 10,000 employees leave the company.
Despite laying off the entire ethics and community team in the AI department, Microsoft still has an active AI office.. This office is responsible for establishing the rules and principles that govern the company’s AI initiatives. According to the US company, Investment in responsible work is on the rise, even with recent layoffs.
“Microsoft is committed to building AI products and experiences safely and responsibly, and we do this by investing in people, processes, and partnerships that prioritize this. Over the past six years, we’ve increased the number of people in our product teams and the Office of Responsible AI who, along with us, All of us at Microsoft have a responsibility to ensure our AI principles are put into practice.”
Studies to understand the impact of artificial intelligence
Microsoft officials say the Ethics and Community team played a key role in ensuring the company’s responsible AI principles were reflected in product design. The team developed an RPG called Judgment Call, which allowed designers to visualize potential harm from artificial intelligence and discuss these issues during product development.
Microsoft’s Ethics and Society team reached its highest number in 2020, with nearly 30 employees, including engineers, designers, and philosophers. In October of the same year, the team was reduced to around seven people as part of a reorganization. Most of the team members were reassigned to other areas of the company, but they complained that the smaller team made it difficult to get the big tasks done.
The layoffs of Microsoft’s Ethics and Society team came as the remaining members were focused on their biggest challenge yet: predicting the effects of the global deployment of the company’s OpenAI-based tools. In 2021, Microsoft’s Ethics and Community team wrote a memo detailing the risks associated with the Bing Image Creator trademark.
While text-to-image technology has become wildly popular, Microsoft researchers accurately predicted that it could also harm artists’ livelihoods by allowing anyone to easily copy their style.
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