Microsoft lays off AI ethics and society team

Microsoft laid off its entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence organization as part of recent layoffs that affected 10,000 employees across the company, Platformer has learned.

The move leaves Microsoft without a dedicated team to ensure its AI principles are closely tied to product design at a time when the company is leading the charge to make AI tools available to the mainstream, current and former employees said.

Microsoft still maintains an active Office of Responsible AI, which is tasked with creating rules and principles to govern the company’s AI initiatives. The company says its overall investment in responsibility work is increasing despite the recent layoffs.

“Microsoft is committed to developing AI products and experiences safely and responsibly, and does so by investing in people, processes, and partnerships that prioritize this,” the company said in a statement. “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. We appreciate the trailblazing work the Ethics & Society did to help us on our ongoing responsible AI journey.”

But employees said the ethics and society team played a critical role in ensuring that the company’s responsible AI principles are actually reflected in the design of the products that ship.

“People would look at the principles coming out of the office of responsible AI and say, ‘I don’t know how this applies,’” one former employee says. “Our job was to show them and to create rules in areas where there were none.”

In recent years, the team designed a role-playing game called Judgment Call that helped designers envision potential harms that could result from AI and discuss them during product development. It was part of a larger “responsible innovation toolkit” that the team posted publicly.

More recently, the team has been working to identify risks posed by Microsoft’s adoption of OpenAI’s technology throughout its suite of products.

The ethics and society team was at its largest in 2020, when it had roughly 30 employees including engineers, designers, and philosophers. In October, the team was cut to roughly seven people as part of a reorganization.

In a meeting with the team following the reorg, John Montgomery, corporate vice president of AI, told employees that company leaders had instructed them to move swiftly. “The pressure from [CTO] Kevin [Scott] and [CEO] Satya [Nadella] is very, very high to take these most recent OpenAI models and the ones that come after them and move them into customers hands at a very high speed,” he said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by Platformer.

Because of that pressure, Montgomery said, much of the team was going to be moved to other areas of the organization.

Some members of the team pushed back. “I’m going to be bold enough to ask you to please reconsider this decision,” one employee said on the call. “While I understand there are business issues at play … what this team has always been deeply concerned about is how we impact society and the negative impacts that we’ve had. And they are significant.”

Montgomery declined. “Can I reconsider? I don’t think I will,” he said. “Cause unfortunately the pressures remain the same. You don’t have the view that I have, and probably you can be thankful for that. There’s a lot of stuff being ground up into the sausage.”

In response to questions, though, Montgomery said the team would not be eliminated.

“It’s not that it’s going away — it’s that it’s evolving,” he said. “It’s evolving toward putting more of the energy within the individual product teams that are building the services and the software, which does mean that the central hub that has been doing some of the work is devolving its abilities and responsibilities.”

Most members of the team were transferred elsewhere within Microsoft. Afterward, remaining ethics and society team members said that the smaller crew made it difficult to implement their ambitious plans.Because of that pressure, Montgomery said, much of the team was going to be moved to other areas of the organization.

Some members of the team pushed back. “I’m going to be bold enough to ask you to please reconsider this decision,” one employee said on the call. “While I understand there are business issues at play … what this team has always been deeply concerned about is how we impact society and the negative impacts that we’ve had. And they are significant.”

Montgomery declined. “Can I reconsider? I don’t think I will,” he said. “Cause unfortunately the pressures remain the same. You don’t have the view that I have, and probably you can be thankful for that. There’s a lot of stuff being ground up into the sausage.”

In response to questions, though, Montgomery said the team would not be eliminated.

“It’s not that it’s going away — it’s that it’s evolving,” he said. “It’s evolving toward putting more of the energy within the individual product teams that are building the services and the software, which does mean that the central hub that has been doing some of the work is devolving its abilities and responsibilities.”

Most members of the team were transferred elsewhere within Microsoft. Afterward, remaining ethics and society team members said that the smaller crew made it difficult to implement their ambitious plans. The Verge