Microsoft Lays Off Entire Team Responsible For Developing AI Ethically
The world of tech giants is grim right now, especially for employees within the industry. Microsoft recently laid off 10,000 people that also meant the death knell for US-based company's entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence division.
Essentially, now Microsoft doesn't have a team telling it how to ensure that AI products and tools are built responsibly keeping in mind the humanity of our differences and similarities, and for our collective good. This is especially worrying because Microsoft is now planning to imbibe AI capabilities in a myriad of services, starting with a search chatbot in Bing.
What is happening at Microsoft?
For now, Microsoft has an Office for Responsible AI (ORA) that the company claims "puts Microsoft principles into practice by setting the company-wide rules for responsible AI through the implementation of our governance and public policy work."
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In addition, Microsoft claims that even in the absence of an ethics team for AI, investment in building responsible AI has actually shot up. "Over the past six years we have increased the number of people across our product teams and within the Office of Responsible AI. We appreciate the trailblazing work the ethics and society team did to help us on our ongoing responsible AI journey," Microsoft said.
But many employees believe that the ethics and society team was crucial in ensuring that AI products were designed keeping responsibility in mind. A former employee described how they would show creators how to apply principles that were coming from ORA.
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The same team was also assessing risks associated with including OpenAI's ChatGPT in Microsoft services. In 2020, the team had 30 employees and the number fell to seven last year. Now, the team no longer exists.
What do you think about the dangers of discarding ethics while building AI? Let us know in the comments below.?For more in the world of?technology?and?science, keep reading?Indiatimes.com.
