MANILA, Philippines – Microsoft has laid off a team set up to guide innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) that would be ethical, responsible and otherwise sustainable, according to a report on Platformer on Tuesday, March 14 (March 13, US time). These layoffs are part of a reorganization push announced in January, which would slash about 10,000 jobs. They also follow a multibillion-dollar investment by Microsoft into OpenAI. Microsoft said in a statement it was "committed to developing AI products and experiences safely and responsibly, and does so by investing in people, processes, and partnerships that prioritize this." "Over the past six years we have increased the number of people across our product teams and within the Office of Responsible AI who, along with all of us at Microsoft, are accountable for ensuring we put our AI principles into practice. While Microsoft still maintains its Office of Responsible AI, its ethics and society team was in charge of ensuring the company's responsible AI principles were reflected in the designs of products shipped.

Microsoft is adding new AI features to its popular apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The new set of tools, called Microsoft 365 Copilot, will let people do things like create PowerPoint decks with a short prompt or summarize meeting recordings. Copilot runs on the same underlying AI technology that powers the buzzy viral chatbot ChatGPT, and is being tested now with a few business partners ahead of a wider release to all users in the "coming months," according to the company. "Today we are at the start of a new era of computing," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a livestreamed announcement on Thursday. Nadella said Microsoft's new AI products will "remove the drudgery of our daily tasks and jobs, freeing us to rediscover the joy of creation."

Microsoft has eliminated its entire team responsible for ensuring the ethical use of AI software at a time when the Windows giant is ramping up its use of machine learning technology. The decision to ditch the ethics and society team within its artificial intelligence organization is part of the 10,000 job cuts Microsoft announced in January, which will continue rolling through the IT titan into next year. The hit to this particular unit may remove some guardrails meant to ensure Microsoft's products that integrate machine learning features meet the mega-corp's standards for ethical use of AI. And it comes as discussion rages about the effects of controversial artificial intelligence models on society at large. Baking AI ethics into the whole business – as something for all employees to consider – seems kinda like when Bill Gates told his engineers in 2002 to make security an organization-wide priority, which obviously went really well.

An entire team responsible for making sure that Microsoft's AI products are shipped with safeguards to mitigate social harms was cut during the company's most recently layoff of 10,000 employees, Platformer reported. Former employees said that the ethics and society team was a critical part of Microsoft's strategy to reduce risks associated with using OpenAI technology in Microsoft products. Before it was killed off, the team developed an entire "responsible innovation toolkit" to help Microsoft engineers forecast what harms could be caused by AI--and then to diminish those harms. Platformer's report came just before OpenAI released possibly its most powerful AI model yet, GPT-4, which is already helping to power Bing search, Reuters reported. In a statement provided to Ars, Microsoft said that it remains "committed to developing AI products and experiences safely and responsibly, and does so by investing in people, processes, and partnerships that prioritize this."

Microsoft's new Bing Chat tool is making massive waves, but the tech giant now lacks a dedicated team to focus on implementing AI technology in a way that meets the company's guidelines. According to a new report from Platformer (via The Verge (opens in new tab)), Microsoft recently laid off one of the teams responsible for handling ethics in AI usage. This comes at a time when Bing Chat is exploding in popularity, with the tool pushing Bing to over 100 million daily active users. Platformer notes that while there is still a set of guiding principles in the form of Microsoft's Office of Responsible AI, there is no longer a dedicated team to interpret these principles in a rapidly evolving field of technology. "People would look at the principles coming out of the office of responsible AI and say, 'I don't know how this applies,'" said one former employee.

Microsoft has laid off a team dedicated to ensuring the responsible development and deployment of AI. Platformer reports the ethics and society team were laid off as part of wider cuts to Microsoft's workforce. However, the decision leaves Microsoft with fewer experts working to ensure solutions are safe and have a net positive impact. The perception of Microsoft as an AI leader has deepened following its exclusive partnership with OpenAI. The duo continue to deliver powerful new AI capabilities across Microsoft's products.