Elon Musk Questions Microsoft’s Decision to Layoff AI Ethics Team
The tech billionaire has warned about the dangers of unregulated AI technology
By | MADELINE GARFINKLE | www.entrepreneur.com
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced 10,000 more layoffs across the company. Among the employees affected were the company’s entire ethics and society team in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.
The team was responsible for assessing the potential risks and harm posed by AI and then discussing those issues during product development. The team was largest in 2020 at a headcount of 30 before shrinking down to seven in October 2022.
Now, Microsoft has let go of its entire ethics team, a decision some are skeptical of — especially as Microsoft recently invested $10 billion in OpenAI, the startup that created the increasingly popular chatbot, ChatGPT.
Tech billionaire and Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted a link to news of Microsoft’s layoffs with the caption: “Microsoft fired their AI safety team?”
