For the past few months, Microsoft has been all in on developing and releasing artificial intelligence products. That includes its Bing Chat chatbot and search AI, its Copilot products for assistance in various apps, and more. However, there have also been many concerns about how companies like Microsoft will handle the privacy and ethical issues with the use of AI products.
In March, as part of the company's plan to lay off 10,000 employees, it shut down its Ethics and Society team. Today, in a blog post, Natasha Crampton, Microsoft's Chief Responsible AI Officer, wrote about why that decision was made as part of an overall look into the company's responsible AI plans.
Crampton stated that the Ethics and Society team "was important to enabling us to get where we are today." However, she said that Microsoft decided to make some organizational changes for the company's responsible AI division:
Last year, we made two key changes to our responsible AI ecosystem: first, we made critical new investments in the team responsible for our Azure OpenAI Service, which includes cutting-edge technology like GPT-4; and second, we infused some of our user research and design teams with specialist expertise by moving former Ethics & Society team members into those teams. Following those changes, we made the hard decision to wind down the remainder of the Ethics & Society team, which affected seven people. No decision affecting our colleagues is easy, but it was one guided by our experience of the most effective organizational structures to ensure our responsible AI practices are adopted across the company.
Crampton says that Microsoft now has 350 people working in some capacity on responsible AI. Of that number, 129 employees are working full-time on just that topic and the rest have responsible AI as a major part of their duties. She added that Microsoft has plans to hire new employees and move some current ones to work full-time on responsible AI duties, and more will be revealed on those efforts "in the coming months."
The blog post also talks about Microsoft's Responsible AI Council, which meets regularly to discuss these topics. The council is chaired by the company's president Brad Smith and its CTO Kevin Scott. It also talks about how Microsoft is working to put in responsible AI ethics across all of the company's divisions. Crampton stated:
We have senior leaders tasked with spearheading responsible AI within each core business group and we continually train and grow a large network of responsible AI “champions” with a range of skills and roles for more regular, direct engagement.
While all of these plans sound like Microsoft is taking the concerns of many about the rise of AI seriously, we will have to see if the company's actions will be the same as its words in the months and years ahead.
