Meta is restructuring its “Responsible AI” team, reflecting a strategic shift in its approach to artificial intelligence development. The move, first reported by The Information, appears to take a distributed approach amid a turbulent landscape where AI’s role in society is increasingly scrutinized.
Meta told the media outlet that it is integrating members of its responsible AI team into separate divisions across the company. A Meta spokesperson said this decision will incorporate AI safety considerations more directly into the development of core products and technologies.
The impact of generative AI has raised alarms around the world, from people concerned about the lack of privacy to leaders worried about a possible AI apocalypse.
Meta offered assurances that its decision to disperse its responsible AI team does not entirely mean that the company does not want to develop AI responsibly.
“We continue to prioritize and invest in the development of safe and responsible AI,” a spokesperson said. The move appears to extend their efforts rather than having a centralized entity to oversee ethics in AI development.
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David Evan Harris, former Meta researcher, has raised the alarm about the possible misuse of artificial intelligence technologies.
“After working on Facebook’s civic integrity team, I moved on to manage research teams working on responsible AI, charting the potential harms of AI and looking for ways to make it safer and fairer for society,” David said in a statement. opinion article published. The Guardian in June. “I saw how my employer’s own AI systems could facilitate housing discrimination, create racist associations, and exclude women from seeing job postings visible to men.”
It also warns about the dangers of deepfakes, and even the possibility of malicious actors using open source LLM to spread misinformation. The role of the now dismantled team was to prevent these things from happening.
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This restructuring coincides with the company’s initiative to streamline its operations, as part of its “year of efficiency,” as CEO Mark Zuckerberg called it. The move is seen as a response to the growing importance of generative AI tools in technology, a sector in which Meta has been investing heavily.
Meta recently launched generative AI tools for advertisers, showing its commitment to AI-powered solutions. His portfolio includes the popular open source large language model “Llama 2”, a text-to-video generator, a painting tool and a new AI assistant, along with rumors of an upcoming Llama 3 next year .
The industry has seen major developments recently, including the departure of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI. The board, which focused on aligning the company’s mission with security and AI alignment, saw OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever play a crucial role in the transition. Industry observers suspected a conflict between people who want to slow AI development, known as “slowdowns,” and those eager to move faster.
Although OpenAI’s new interim CEO Emmet Shear clarified that “the board did not remove Sam for any specific disagreement over security,” speculation persists about the level of concern those responsible have about alignment and security.
