Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would lay off 10,000 of its employees. It seems that the firm showed the door to the entire team tasked with providing ethical AI.
A layoff raised questions as Microsoft tried to integrate artificial intelligence into its core business groups. The software giant has put a team entirely at work dedicated to guiding ethical and responsible AI innovation. As reported by Platformer, this layoff is part of the layoffs that affected 10,000 employees announced at the beginning of the year.
Are We Moving Towards Unethical Artificial Intelligence?
The move calls into question Microsoft’s intention to fuse product design and AI principles at a time when it’s making controversial AI tools available to the mainstream. As we mentioned in our previous news, Microsoft has invested billions more in its partnership with OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 tools. The company’s artificial intelligence technologies were integrated into the Bing search engine and the Edge web browser. Bing’s Chat bot was also on the agenda with some aggressive rhetoric.
Although Microsoft is liquidating the team working for responsible AI, it can close the gap with the Office of Responsible AI. According to employees who spoke to Platformer, the laid-off team was working on the risks that OpenAI technologies could pose if they were added to Microsoft’s products. On the other hand, it is stated that the dismissed team made significant contributions to the artificial intelligence design of the products offered to the public.
“Ethics and society” departments at companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple often try to rein in large tech organizations by pointing to the potential societal implications. Microsoft, on the other hand, may not want to hear the “No” answer anymore. Because Microsoft had announced that every 1% market share it could get from Google would bring $2 billion in annual revenue.
