Yahoo Finance Will Layoffs by Big Tech Players Hurt Ethical AI Development?
Big tech firms have been cutting back on teams dedicated to analyzing ethical issues around Artificial Intelligence (AI) development. Companies including Amazon AMZN, Alphabet’s GOOGL Google, Meta Platform META, Microsoft MSFT and Twitter have fired several employees dedicated to ensuring the conscious development of AI to cut further costs.
These staff are among the thousands affected by the recent waves of layoffs at these companies amid persistent inflation, rising interest rates and uncertainty over how tightening financial conditions will affect the economy.
Responsible AI teams are among the only internal bastions that big tech have to make sure that people and communities impacted by AI systems are in the minds of the engineers who build them.
Exclusive new data from a London-based analytics startup show that the five biggest tech firms have an estimated army of 33,000 people working directly on AI research and development, with Amazon boasting the largest pool of AI-focused employees at 10,113. Microsoft has 7,133 AI staff and Google has 4,970, according to Glass.ai, which used machine-learning technology to scrutinize tech company websites and thousands of LinkedIn profiles of their AI-focused employees.
With tools such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI‘s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude bringing a new wave of generative AI innovation, the ethical nature and safety of the technology has been called into question.
Misinformation and bias are among the risks that the technology has been found to be susceptible to. Advanced AI systems are expected to eventually replace some jobs in the financial, media, legal and technology sectors.
More than a thousand specialists and academics, including Twitter owner Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, asked the big companies to stop the development of AI models, until it is known with certainty that its effects will be positive and its risks will be manageable.
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Tech Giants Assure Commitment Toward Ethical AI Practices
Meta disbanded its responsible innovation team back in September 2022, which affected 20 engineering and ethicist roles overseeing the evaluation of civil rights and ethics on Facebook and Instagram. This Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company has just unveiled new inventory filters for Facebook and Instagram Feeds, now accessible to advertisers in English- and Spanish-speaking markets. Meta has also developed a multi-stage AI review system to classify content for advertisers, ensuring brand suitability controls are implemented. This system complements existing technology that identifies content that violates or potentially violates Meta’s Community Standards and Guidelines. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for META first-quarter earnings is pegged at $1.94 per share, indicating a decline of 28.6% from the year-ago quarter’s reported figure.
Microsoft is leading the AI release race since it partnered with OpenAI. This alliance has allowed it to incorporate ChatGPT technology into many of its tools, including Bing and Microsoft 365. In this period, the company received some complaints about biases, inaccuracies and inappropriate behavior of this AI model. This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company dissolved the entire ethics and society team last January, with the company stating that the departments consisted of less than 10 members of staff, and that hundreds were still actively working in responsible AI, as well as growth of responsible AI operations.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for MSFT fiscal third-quarter 2023 earnings is pegged at $2.22 per share, indicating flat year-over-year performance.
Some employees in charge of AI ethics supervision at Google were recently fired, among a larger group of 12,000 workers at Alphabet. Google has not reported how many roles were removed. However, this Zacks Rank #3 company has assured that responsible AI remains a top priority. The company had already been in the midst of controversy in 2020 and 2021, when two of its AI ethics research leaders, Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru, were fired. Google is striking a partnership to combine its artificial intelligence language models with software from startup Replit Inc. that helps computer programmers write code in a bid to compete with a similar product from Microsoft Corp.’s GitHub and OpenAI.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for GOOGL first-quarter earnings is pegged at $1.05 per share, indicating a decline of 14.63% from the year-ago quarter’s reported figure.
The announcement comes just one week after Microsoft-owned Github announced the launch of Copilot X, an upgraded version of its AI-driven software development platform that adopts the latest OpenAI GPT-4 model and expands Copilot’s capabilities, adding chat and voice features and allowing developers to get instant answers to questions about projects.
This sets up a battle between Microsoft and Google to determine which company can provide the most attractive platform and tools for software developers.
Amazon recently announced that it was laying off 9,000 more staff in the coming weeks, adding to some 18,000 previously disclosed job cuts. It is likely that many of Amazon’s latest layoffs will be concentrated in its struggling Alexa business. Amazon had about 10,000 staff working on Alexa back in November 2022 and while that number will likely include many sales and marketing staff, there will also be significant overlap with the 10,000 AI-focused staff. Amazon-owned Twitch made similar cuts in this area last week. Last week, this Zacks Rank #3 company’s Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and NVIDIA NVDA announced a multi-part collaboration focused on building out the world’s most scalable, on-demand AI infrastructure optimized for training increasingly complex large language models and developing generative AI applications.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for AMZN’s first-quarter earnings is pegged at 20 cents per share, indicating a decline of 4.76% from the year-ago quarter’s reported figure.
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