After Saying He Wanted an Open Algorithm, Elon Musk Just Fired the Twitter Team Responsible for Doing Just That

[Huat Zai]

 

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has started making major cuts to the company's operations, in an apparently desperate effort to bring costs down.

Aside from gutting the company's executive suite and dissolving its board, the billionaire CEO has started culling a significant number of employees as well, locking them out of their accounts unannounced.

 

As Wired reports, the company's "Ethical AI" team has been caught by the purge. That's especially unfortunate, given that Musk has argued Twitter's algorithm should be more transparent — something the team was working on right up until being fired wholesale.

In short, it's exactly the kind of short-sighted action we've come to expect from Musk, who has taken over Twitter's operations like a bull in a china shop.

 

Rumman Chowdhury, director of the Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability (META) team at Twitter, was let go as part of Friday's mass layoffs.

But not much love was lost, given the company's controversial new CEO.

"Imagine feeling relief that you’re the one on the receiving end of the Thanos snap," she wrote.

The team was tasked with researching any political biases that might be unfairly targeting certain groups.

 

"We were told, in no uncertain terms, not to rock the boat," Chowdhury told Wired earlier this week, prior to the layoffs.

Joan Deitchman, who was the unit's senior manager, revealed that the entire team had been let go.

"Yep, the team is gone," Deitchman wrote today. "The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice."

"The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies," she added. "All that is gone."

 

It's a big loss in the field.

"The META team was one of the only good case studies of a tech company running an AI ethics group that interacts with the public and academia with substantial credibility," Ali Alkhatib, director of the Center for Applied Data Ethics at the University of San Francisco, told Wired.

That kind of progressive mindset on ethical use of machine learning appears to be the very last thing on Musk's mind right now. The billionaire has been busy lashing out at advertisers for abandoning him after making brash remarks and spreading baseless conspiracy theories.

It's especially ironic considering the amount of time and thought Musk has committed to making algorithms more transparent. In March, roughly a month before announcing his bid to buy the company, Musk argued that "the algorithm needs to be open source."

 

Given what has gone down this week, the billionaire is clearly gunning for a scorched Earth approach that will likely keep Twitter's operations in a tailspin for a while longer. Without the backing of advertisers, Twitter will have an even steeper financial hill to climb.

Whether Musk's own efforts to build a radically transparent and fair social media platform that caters to both sides of the aisle will ever amount to anything close to what this particular team was working on remains to be seen.

But given where we are right now, it's difficult to imagine.

 

https://futurism.com/elon-musk-twitter-ethical-ai?mc_cid=3e1653ddd6&mc_eid=d6aea6efd0

[ODACHEK]

But hish robot walks rike an elderly.

[Satki]

Looks like all the ceca sounding names kena fired

 

 

but i doubt there is a cull by race

 

i think it is more like you throw a stone and 3/4 room kena hit

 

so it is inevitable that many of them will up the lorry cia

 

[socrates469bc]

25 minutes ago, Satki said:

Looks like all the ceca sounding names kena fired

 

 

but i doubt there is a cull by race

 

i think it is more like you throw a stone and 3/4 room kena hit

 

so it is inevitable that many of them will up the lorry cia

 

 

dont worry, cbp have plenty of opening for 3rd rate coders masquerading as sakti first rate coders.

 

wahahahahahahahahahaha

 

[Satki]

many try to act cool as if that automatically makes them coders

 

I usually slam them in my weekly chat

 

 

[XianGe]

2 hours ago, Satki said:

Looks like all the ceca sounding names kena fired

 

 

but i doubt there is a cull by race

 

i think it is more like you throw a stone and 3/4 room kena hit

 

so it is inevitable that many of them will up the lorry cia

 

 

Tink most if them hired abnn... Less east asians

[The_King]

+1 to musk.

Hahahaha Hahahaha bye ceca

[The_King]

Hail musk

[Satki]

I think he must have seen many of the glib tongues in his tesla and spacex

so the first day, chop 2 and then cull the rest

 

 

look at VP in the US. classic case of an empty vessel that makes the most noise

I see UK will fail big time with their experiment

[socrates469bc]

2 hours ago, Satki said:

I think he must have seen many of the glib tongues in his tesla and spacex

so the first day, chop 2 and then cull the rest

 

 

look at VP in the US. classic case of an empty vessel that makes the most noise

I see UK will fail big time with their experiment

 

these jokers failed in comparison to this wokes' god.

 

and so many kumgong serfs so happy.

 

wahahahahahahahaha

 

  

[The_King]

The ex employee now hate their ex coe

[socrates469bc]

2 hours ago, Satki said:

I see UK will fail big time with their experiment

btw, if we know undercover truss and her woke treasurer's background, u will not be surprised why things turn out this way.

 

wahahahahahahahahahaha

 

 

 

 

[Satki]

face cui but neh neh not  bad

 

probably @ManOfTheHour taste?

[The_King]

6 hours ago, XianGe said:

 

Tink most if them hired abnn... Less east asians

at NK abnn, ceca etc... all these word will make us will kena NTUC point. those ppl are oppressed creature

Edited November 5, 2022 by The_King

[Huat Zai]

1 hour ago, The_King said:

at NK abnn, ceca etc... all these word will make us will kena NTUC point. those ppl are oppressed creature