During a round of layoffs totaling some 10,000 employees Microsoft has kicked one of its AI ethics teams to the curb. This development comes off the heels of high profile launches for generative AI systems, extended partnerships, and further integrations of AI services into Edge and Bing. The team was not large, having been cut down in size back in October during a reorganization, but still made an impact within Microsoft as a mediator for AI policy and implementations. While the larger Office of Responsible AI that dictates the rules of play for the use of AI within the company remains intact, sources from within stated that the ethics and society team played a more pivotal role in ensuring the rules were applied during design and development of products.

These events ring familiar tones to those which occurred at Google in 2020, when ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru was removed after publishing a critical overview of the large language models now popular in products such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. This cascaded through the company as several other leading members left amidst the turmoil. These events marred Google's reputation and raised concerns over the company's credibility regarding responsible use of AI, and as we're still mentioning it have had lasting impacts on their brand.As the race for market share in AI models and integrations heats up it may be that these companies are more interested in shipping products than mitigating the impact related to the irresponsible or negligent use of AI. Microsoft's CVP of finance Philippe Ockenden has stated, "For every 1 point of share gain in the search advertising market, it's a $2 billion revenue opportunity for our advertising business." With Bing having eclipsed 100 million active users shortly after the inclusion of the Bing Chat AI there certainly seems to be monetary merits to the all-in approach Microsoft has had with AI.