The recent round of layoffs affected 10,000 employees across the company, according to Platformer. The decision to eliminate the team is somewhat puzzling, given that Microsoft is investing billions more dollars into its partnership with OpenAI, the startup behind innovative art- and text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2. Moreover, the company is overhauling its Bing search engine and Edge web browser, powered by a next-generation large language model that is “more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search.”
This move casts doubt on Microsoft’s commitment to ensuring its product design and AI principles are aligned, especially at the time when the company is making its controversial AI tools more widely available to the mainstream.
The company’s Office of Responsible AI (ORA) will continue to set policies and regulations for responsible AI, but the ethics and society team was responsible for ensuring that these principles were incorporated into the actual design of products that were released to the public. The team was also working to identify potential risks associated with Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI technology into its suite of products.
Although the ethics and society team was relatively small, with only seven members remaining after a reorganization in October, its absence could have significant implications. Sources suggest that pressure from top executives to quickly introduce OpenAI models and iterations into the market may have influenced the decision to lay off the team.
Last year, most members of Microsoft’s ethics and society team were transferred to other teams during a reorganization. On March 6, the remaining members were told they would be eliminated. According to sources, the team felt their dismissal was due to Microsoft’s newfound focus on delivering AI products faster than the competition rather than prioritizing socially responsible thinking for the long term.
Teams such as Microsoft’s ethics and society department are important in tech organizations, as they raise concerns about potential societal consequences and legal issues. However, Microsoft may have shifted its priorities towards gaining market share from Google’s search engine, with hopes that every 1% gained would result in $2 billion in annual revenue. As a result, Microsoft may have become less receptive to hearing “No” from the ethics and social team.
“Microsoft laid off its entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence organization as part of recent layoffs”
MSのAI組織内の倫理チームが解雇に。https://t.co/9ltwkLLqcH
— iwashi / Yoshimasa Iwase (@iwashi86) March 14, 2023
