Opinion: In the era of deep-fake videos, tech companies must not dismantle their ethics teams

Someone said recently that the internet broke our democracy. It is also possible to imagine how deep-fake technology can break people’s hearts. — Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash

Someone forwarded me a story about Microsoft laying off its ethics team. My first thought was “fake news.” It’s surprising to learn that Microsoft even had an ethics department. It’s even stranger to hear that the group has been disbanded at a time when technological innovation is getting wild.

These are the days of deep-fake videos, internet trolls, and artificial intelligence (AI). And so, in chasing down this story, I used my best internet skills. I checked multiple sources. I refused to believe websites I had never heard of. Eventually I found a report on Popular Science. A reporter there named Andrew Paul explained, “This month saw the surprise dissolution of Microsoft’s entire Ethics & Society team – the latest casualty in the company’s ongoing layoffs affecting 10,000 employees.”