Big Tech companies brought on employees focused on election safety, misinformation and online extremism. The wave of cuts has raised questions among some inside and outside the industry about Silicon Valley's commitment to providing extensive guardrails and user protections at a time when content moderation and misinformation remain challenging problems to solve.
In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, as online platforms began facing greater scrutiny for their impacts on users, elections and society, many tech firms started investing in safeguards.
Microsoft cut a key team focused on ethical AI product development. And Facebook-parent Meta suggested that it might cut staff working in non-technical roles as part of its latest round of layoffs. To complicate matters, these cuts come as tech giants are rapidly rolling out transformative new technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality — both of which have sparked concerns about their potential impacts on users.
One former Twitch employee affected by the layoffs and who previously worked on safety issues said the company had recently boosted its outsourcing capacity for addressing reports of violative content. Another former Twitch employee, who like the first spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of putting their severance at risk, told CNN that cutting back on responsible AI work, despite the fact that it wasn't a direct revenue driver, could be bad for business in the long run.
In a statement to CNN, Microsoft said the team "played a key role" in developing its responsible AI policies and practices, adding that its efforts have been ongoing since 2017. The company stressed that even with the cuts, "we have hundreds of people working on these issues across the company, including net new, dedicated responsible AI teams that have since been established and grown significantly during this time.
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