Microsoft Cuts AI Ethics Team as It Invests Billions More Into AI Technology, Report Says

Microsoft Cuts AI Ethics Team as It Invests Billions More Into AI Technology, Report Says
Screens displaying the logos of Microsoft and ChatGPT, a conversational artificial intelligence application software developed by OpenAI. Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images
Bill Pan
Bill Pan
Reporter
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The last remaining members of an ethics and society team within Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) department didn’t survive a recent round of mass layoffs, according to a report.

The change comes as Microsoft signs a “multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment” deal with OpenAI, the startup behind AI-powered image and text generators like DALL-E and ChatGPT, and upgrades its Bing search engine and Edge internet browser to incorporate a “new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT.”