There goes Twitter’s ethical AI team

Twitter kicked off its highly anticipated mass layoffs Thursday night by eliminating its top internal critics. Twitter Ethical AI TeamAccording to former employees, it is no longer there.

Multiple Twitter members Machine Learning, Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (The META team, including its former captain, posted on Twitter saying that they are no longer at the company. At least one of the former workers indicated that the entire team had been disbanded. The apparent layoffs affecting the company’s most powerful internal control group come with thousands more props for cuts likely to affect about half of the company’s employees according to the above. Reports.

Gizmodo found tweets from about half a dozen META team members claiming to have been affected by the layoffs. META President Roman Choudhury posted a screenshot of seemingly going on Her Twitter email account was locked along with the tweet reading, “Did it start already? Good night layoffs!” Choudhury, who has led a number of transparency initiatives at the company including the launch of one of its kind Arithmetic Bias Bonus Challengewent to Say“It’s definitely just a slope on this hell site.”

Other former members of the META team said they were laid off, too, with former senior engineering director Joan Deichmann saying, “The team is gone.” The name of the META team was also not listed on Twitter Jobs page As of this writing on Friday morning.

Dichman writes: “The team that was researching and pushing for algorithm transparency and algorithm selection, the team that was studying computational amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical tools and methodologies for artificial intelligence. It all went.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment on the META team’s layoff or whether work on AI accountability will continue at the company.

was META formed Last year with the explicit mission of reviewing Twitter’s algorithms to investigate potential unintended harms and biases. The team’s research led to real changes in Twitter. In one case, the company stop using Automated cropping algorithm after META researchers found evidence that it expresses racial bias. META, formed in the months following Google Controversial shooting From the co-leader of the Ethical AI Team, he was unique in that he actively sought out respected and respected engineers and researchers who candidly criticize Big Tech’s impacts on society.

The group has been widely praised among AI researchers and tech critics as a meaningful symbol of transparency and accountability within a major tech company that can, at its best, identify harmful problems and help. Rebuilding Insulting users’ trust. Twitter, under Musk’s leadership, appears to view these efforts as redundant operations.

Although the full picture of Twitter Mus-The era’s purification is still not clear, it’s clear that it extends far beyond the META team.

Nearly 7,500 Twitter employees received an email alerting them to the impending layoff Thursday night to me Reports in New York times. Workers were instructed to stay home from the office on Friday while layoffs continued.

“In an effort to put Twitter on a healthy track, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce,” The email, which was hidden Occurred Read “Twitter”. “We are aware that this will affect a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success going forward.”

Musk, who ended his takeover of the company last week, had previously considered laying off up to 75% of the company’s employees. to me The Washington Post, before finally paring it down. Now, internal emails are said to indicate that about half of the company’s employees could lose their jobs.

the majority From this in the name of radically reducing costs. In addition to layoffs, Musk reportedly instructed employees to create up to $1 billion annually in savings from infrastructure costs.Reuters Reports. Musk wants to generate $1.5 million to $3 million a day in savings from servers and cloud services, which the report warns of risks putting pressure on him. Twitter during high traffic events.

This is an evolving story.