Just yesterday, Geoffrey Hinton - the “godfather of AI - quit Google and told the New York Times he had serious misgivings about the pace and direction of AI expansion, while a group of leading tech experts recently signed an open letter calling for a pause on AI development so that its risks can be better understood. Indeed, even Microsoft itself thinks ChatGPT - whose developer, OpenAI, is owned by Microsoft - should be regulated. Still, there’s no doubt that shutting down its AI Ethics & Society team didn’t go over well, and chances are Microsoft still has some way to go to ease the public’s collective mind on this topic.

Rather than abandoning its AI efforts entirely, it seems Microsoft is seeking to ensure teams across the company have regular contact with experts in responsible AI. The company’s latest blog post is surely aiming to alleviate those concerns among the public. If Microsoft lacked a dedicated team to help guide its AI products in responsible directions, the thinking went, it would struggle to curtail the kinds of abuses and questionable behavior its Bing chatbot has become notorious for. Navigating the scandals Jacob Roach / Digital TrendsĪI has hardly been free of scandals in recent months, and it’s those worries that fuelled the backlash against Microsoft’s disbanding of its AI ethics team. However, seven members of the group were fired as part of Microsoft’s extensive job cuts that saw 10,000 workers laid off at the start of 2023.

Instead, Microsoft adopted the approach it has taken with its privacy, security, and accessibility teams, and “embedded responsible AI across the company.” In practice, this means Microsoft has senior staff “tasked with spearheading responsible AI within each core business group,” as well as “a large network of responsible AI “champions” with a range of skills and roles for more regular, direct engagement.”Īfter Microsoft shuttered its Ethics & Society team, Crampton noted that some team members were subsequently embedded into teams across the company. In a post on Microsoft’s On the Issues blog, Natasha Crampton - the Redmond firm’s Chief Responsible AI Officer - explained that the ethics team was disbanded because “A single team or a single discipline tasked with responsible or ethical AI was not going to meet our objectives.” Jacob Roach / Digital Trends It wasn’t a good look given the near-simultaneous scandals engulfing AI, but the company has just laid out how it intends to keep its future efforts responsible and in check going forward. Microsoft caught a lot of flak when it shut down its artificial intelligence (AI) Ethics & Society team in March 2023.

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