Microsoft cuts off its ethics and society team, amid OpenAI developments
Microsoft announced to lay off its entire ethics and society team, by terming the current move as a part of its reorgnisational process.
Highlights
- Microsoft decides to cut down on the entire ‘Office of Responsible AI’ team
- The move comes amid the company’s plans big on the OpenAI growth
- The tech giant calls it a part of its reorganisational process
Apart from the recent layoffs that affected 10,000 people around the company, Microsoft eliminated its entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence division, according to reports.
Microsoft’s take on current layoffs
Microsoft has reportedly taken this decision amid its big plans to make AI tools available to current, former, and mainstream employees. Moreover the company has also announced to increase the work responsibility of their AI products, concerning the recent OpenAI growth, amid the recent layoffs.
After taking the decision to lay off the overall team, Microsoft still maintains an active Office of Responsible AI, a team dedicated to creating rules and principles to manage the company's AI initiatives.
On being asked about the ongoing situation, the company called their current decision as part of the reorganisation process and focused on developing their future products safely and responsibly. .
Recent ethics and society team projects
In recent years, the concerned ethics and society team has been dedicated to discussing and assessing potential risks related to several AI products. One such being the Judgement Call, a role-playing game created by the team to analyse the potential damage during the development process. Furthermore, it was included in a bigger ‘toolkit for responsible innovation’ that the team made available to the public recently.
Apart from several other AI products, the team also focused on pinpointing dangers related to Microsoft's newly integrated OpenAI technology.
In 2020, the ethics and society team had a staff of about 30 people, including engineers, designers, and philosophers. The team's size was reduced in October 2022, to about seven people, as part of its reorganisation.initiative.
Given the current restructuring process, John Montgomery, Corporate Vice president of AI in Microsoft, stated that the company leaders had instructed them to move swiftly, given the high speed requirement of the most recent OpenAI model.
Employees take on the reorganisation process
One of the employees said that the decision may leave a fundamental gap in the user experience and design of the AI product. According to other employees, the reorganisation of the ethics and society team will lead to more risk for the company and its people in the future and ongoing projects.
For product specialists in the company that work in making their products more socially responsible, the current layoffs highlights a recurring tension. Till now, the above mentioned team assisted product teams in foreseeing potential technological abuses and resolving any issues before they shipped.
Reports even mentioned the reorganisation of the ethics and society team, to be linked with their focus on solving the greatest challenge yet: Predicting what would happen when Microsoft made products powered by OpenAI available to a worldwide audience.
