Microsoft just laid off one of its responsible AI teams (the ethics and society team)

[highplainsdem]

Great.

From Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton at Platformer:

https://www.platformer.news/p/microsoft-just-laid-off-one-of-its

Microsoft laid off its entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence organization as part of recent layoffs that affected 10,000 employees across the company, Platformer has learned.

The move leaves Microsoft without a dedicated team to ensure its AI principles are closely tied to product design at a time when the company is leading the charge to make AI tools available to the mainstream, current and former employees said.

-snip-

The ethics and society team was at its largest in 2020, when it had roughly 30 employees including engineers, designers, and philosophers. In October, the team was cut to roughly seven people as part of a reorganization.

In a meeting with the team following the reorg, John Montgomery, corporate vice president of AI, told employees that company leaders had instructed them to move swiftly. “The pressure from [CTO] Kevin [Scott] and [CEO] Satya [Nadella] is very very high to take these most recent openAI models and the ones that come after them and move them into customers hands at a very high speed,” he said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by Platformer.

-snip-

Much more at the link.

Including that last year this team had warned Microsoft of the ethical and legal problems with its AI Bing Image Creator, which uses OpenAI's DALL-E, which is being hit with lawsuits.

This team that's now been laid off recommended changes including "blocking Bing Image Creator users from using the names of living artists as prompts" - a recommendation that was ignored.

The companies behind the AI ripping off artists know exactly what they're doing, and don't care how unethical and illegal it is.

And of course this probably goes for every other type of harm AI can cause, if that harm will also bring with it more money and power for the companies pushing the AI.

[patphil]

1. AI has, by its very nature, no concern for the ethics of whatever it does.

It has no conscience, no sense of morality, no sense of guilt, thus has no concern about the ramifications of its actions.
AI can't have "leap of consciousness" revelations; no "ah ha" moments.
It can never actually have a sense of what is truly right or wrong because it is essentially soulless.
It requires humans to monitor and control it's actions; to see that the AI is more than an analytical machine. Take away the human element, and you lose accountability.

And that's why AI is so very dangerous. It's starting point is at the same level as the worst of humanity.

[SheltieLover]

3. Like qpukes with functional brains?

[SheltieLover]

2. This doesn't bode well

[crickets]

4. Understatement. nt

[SheltieLover]

5. Yup. No words for this.