Big tech firms have been cutting back on teams dedicated to analyzing ethical issues around Artificial Intelligence (AI) development. Between them, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Twitter and Amazon. These staff are among the thousands affected by the recent waves of layoffs at these companies. Several experts and organizations, of course, have already raised the alarm.
Microsoft dissolved the entire ethics and society team last January, which led the company’s initial work in the area, reported Financial Times. The British outlet also reported that some employees in charge of AI ethics supervision at Google were recently fired, among a larger group of 12,000 workers at Alphabet, the conglomerate to which the company belongs.
Meta, in September of last year, disassociated 20 engineers and specialists in charge of monitoring civil rights and ethics on Instagram and Facebook. Amazon-owned Twitch made similar cuts in this area last week. And Twitter, under the command of Elon Musk, has reduced its staff by more than half, affecting areas responsible for security, transparency and ethics.
Cuts in ethics teams, in full swing of AI
“It’s shocking how many members of the responsible AI teams are being laid off,” said Andrew Strait, director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, dedicated to ensuring the conscious development of AI. Strait was also an ethics and policy researcher at DeepMind, another Alphabet affiliate. He stressed that “these groups are needed today more than ever.”
There are many who think the same. More than a thousand specialists and academics asked the big companies to stop the development of AI models, until it is known with certainty “that its effects will be positive and its risks will be manageable”. They did so through an open letter, which is signed by various industry executives, such as Elon Musk, owner of Twitter and one of the founders of OpenAI, the person in charge of ChatGPT. They also sign the document Steve Wozniakco-founder of Apple, and Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI.
Josh Simons, a former Facebook AI ethics researcher, told the Financial Times that AI ethics teams are the only internal strongholds that have the bigtech to ensure that the welfare of people and communities are in the minds of developers.
“The speed with which they are being abolished leaves the algorithms of the bigtech at the mercy of advertising imperatives, undermining the well-being of children, vulnerable people and our democracy.”
Josh Simons, former Facebook AI ethics researcher.
What do big tech say?
“We appreciate the pioneering work the ethics and society team has done to help us on our journey to achieve responsible AI,” Microsoft said in a statement as it dissolved the group. The company claimed it removed less than 10 jobs and you still have hundreds of people working in your responsible AI office.
Microsoft is leading the AI release race since it partnered with OpenAI. This alliance has allowed it to incorporate ChatGPT technology into many of its tools, including Bing and Microsoft 365. In all this time, the company has received some complaints about biases, inaccuracies, and inappropriate behavior of this AI model.
Google has not reported how many roles were removed. However, he assured the Financial Times that responsible AI remains a “top priority.” The company had already been in the middle of the controversy in 2020 and 2021, when two of its AI ethics research leads were fired: Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru. Mitchell publicly denounced racism and sexism. He also warned that these biases were affecting the development of AI in the company.