Microsoft advances plan to lay off 10,000 people, laying off entire AI ethics team

According to Platformer, in the latest wave of layoffs involving about 10,000 employees, Microsoft laid off an entire team that guides AI innovation. The goal of this team was to make the development of AI more sustainable, responsible, and appropriate. Ethical and moral requirements.

After firing this ethics team, Microsoft is left with an Office of Responsible AI to formulate rules and standards for AI applications when integrating AI applications and functions into its products. However, employees in this department said that in the past, it was usually the dedicated ethics team that ensured that the rules they set would be reflected in Microsoft's actual product applications, which can be said to be a gatekeeper.

The ethics team underwent a reorganization in October last year. After the reorganization, only seven people remained, and most of the other employees were transferred to other positions. A while ago, John Montgomery, vice president of Microsoft's AI department, told the remaining seven employees that they would eventually be laid off. Some employees in the team believe that they will be laid off because Microsoft wants to focus on launching AI-related products before its competitors, putting long-term social impact second.

Microsoft currently has a partnership with OpenAI. The former has invested hundreds of millions in investment, and is also preparing the social Bing search engine and Edge browser to provide a new next-generation large-scale language that is "more powerful than ChatGPT and specifically designed for search." AI, we also reported a while ago that Microsoft will release a new GPT-4 model soon. Firing the entire ethics team at this point also makes people wonder whether Microsoft has considered the AI ​​application guidelines and product design thoughtfully.