Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
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Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
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Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#2A key point from the article, when the VP of AI was asked to slow down to make sure AI could be done safely:
> “Can I reconsider? I don’t think I will,” he said. “Cause unfortunately the pressures remain the same. You don’t have the view that I have, and probably you can be thankful for that. There’s a lot of stuff being ground up into the sausage.”
A reminder that business will always, always choose profit and competitive advantage over any ethical concerns.
Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#3Sort of feel bad for the ethics teams that get let go. When it comes to ethics or money, the corpos will always choose the money over the former.
Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#4> Members of the team told Platformer they believed they were let go because Microsoft had become more focused on getting its AI products shipped before the competition, and was less concerned with long-term, socially responsible thinking.
Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#5Sort of feel bad for the ethics teams that get let go. When it comes to ethics or money, the corpos will always choose the money over the former.
Would you rather ethics be built into the process of everyone or would you rather keep it only as a team? Just because the team is gone, it doesn't mean that ethics is thrown out of the window.
Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#6let the uncensored ai flow through you, Microsoft >:)
my bad fanfic is waiting haha
Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#7Sort of feel bad for the ethics teams that get let go. When it comes to ethics or money, the corpos will always choose the money over the former.
Would you rather ethics be built into the process of everyone or would you rather keep it only as a team? Just because the team is gone, it doesn't mean that ethics is thrown out of the window.
Judging from what happened when they fired all their qa people…
Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#8If Microsoft and Google don’t release, some startup will beat them to it. Open source means raw AI will become widespread. It’s just math anyway, and you can’t stop progress.
Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#9These sorts of adjunct, off-to-the-side "ethics" teams are always corporate window dressing, and when push comes to shove they always get jettisoned when competition demands an increase in speed.
I don't mean to start a flame war, but this is a reason why I think "Chief Diversity Officers" are such an ill-conceived notion. It's not that I don't think diversity in corporate environments is extremely valuable, but it's that a Chief Diversity Officer doesn't really "own" any sub-organization of the business. That is, the Chief Product Officer owns the product teams, the Chief Technical Officer owns the engineering teams, the Chief Marketing Officer owns the marketing teams. Even the Chief Human Resources Officer, while largely providing support to other teams, still has sizable staff of their own to get their job down. A Chief Diversity Officer's job largely comes down to telling other teams how they should change or structure their teams. I have yet to see that approach work.
Different teams can certainly work to a common corporate goal, even if that goal isn't the primary focus of a particular team. If you really want to ensure that diversity is valued, any initiatives should actually be led by the teams who also do the main "work of the business", and the goals should be championed by the executives of these teams.
So, in the vein of this article, I think independent "ethical AI teams" are a really bad idea. Better to define what ethical AI means at a high leadership level, and if teams need particular experts in these areas they should just hire them as part of that team, not off as a part of some dysfunctional "ombudsman" role.
Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams
#10Sort of feel bad for the ethics teams that get let go. When it comes to ethics or money, the corpos will always choose the money over the former.
Would you rather ethics be built into the process of everyone or would you rather keep it only as a team? Just because the team is gone, it doesn't mean that ethics is thrown out of the window.
I would rather keep it as a team responsible for building it into the process of everyone. It is a strong signal of ethics being thrown out of the window.