Microsoft fired the entire ethics and society team of the artificial intelligence department. this solution leaves Microsoft without a team dedicated to ensuring the integration of artificial intelligence principles into product design., while the company leads the way in the spread of artificial intelligence tools. The action is part of a massive layoff that saw 10,000 employees leave the company.

Despite laying off the entire ethics and society team of the AI ​​department, Microsoft still has an active AI office.. This office is responsible for creating the rules and principles that govern the company’s AI initiatives. According to an American company, investment in responsible work is on the rise, even with recent layoffs.

“Microsoft is committed to safely and responsibly building AI products and experiences, and we do so by investing in people, processes and partnerships that prioritize this. Over the past six years, we have increased the number of people on our product teams and the Office of Responsible AI, which, along with all of us at Microsoft, is responsible for ensuring that we put our AI principles into practice,” the company said in a statement.

Research to understand the impact of artificial intelligence

Microsoft officials say the ethics and community team has played a key role in ensuring that the company’s responsible AI principles are reflected in product design. The team developed a role-playing game called Judgment Call that allowed designers to visualize the potential harm from AI and discuss these issues during product development.

Microsoft’s ethics and society team peaked in 2020 with almost 30 employees, including engineers, designers, and philosophers. In October of that year, a reorganization reduced the team to about seven people. Most of the team members were transferred to other divisions of the company, but they complained that a small team made it difficult to complete large tasks.

The dismissal of the Microsoft Ethics and Society team came at a time when its remaining members were focused on their biggest challenge yet: predicting the impact of the company’s global deployment of OpenAI-based tools. In 2021, Microsoft’s ethics and society team wrote a memo detailing the risks associated with the Bing Image Creator brand.

While text-to-picture technology has become very popular, Microsoft researchers have accurately predicted that it can also damage artists’ livelihoods by making it easy for anyone to copy their style.

ChatGPT 4: a new version of artificial intelligence will be presented this week
It remains unclear whether GPT-4 will be integrated with ChatGPT or be exclusive to the Bing search engine.

Via: Edge

…..