Why Meta and Twitter’s AI and ML layoffs matter | The AI Beat
Ten days ago, as part of mass Twitter layoffs, the company’s entire ethical artificial intelligence (AI) team — which worked to make Twitter’s algorithms more transparent and fair — was let go. The team, called ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability, was led by Rumman Chowdhury, who is well known for her leadership in the field of applied algorithmic ethics.
“My gut reaction was, of course they are the first to be laid off, because of the way the current leadership at Twitter has indicated what they think about questions around ethics and trust and security,” she told VentureBeat. But as a responsible AI lead, she added, she also began to think about what the news meant for her enterprise clients: “Are they also going to start thinking, well, we don’t need this stuff?”