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Throw Caution

The tech news these days are strange bordering on bizarre. Disbanding the team in charge of responsible AI in the name of efficiency is a choice that is wildly irresponsible but totally okay at some level the way the company spokesperson depicts it

Though RAI employees have now been dispersed throughout the organization, the spokesperson noted that they will continue to support “responsible AI development and use.”

“We continue to prioritize and invest in safe and responsible AI development,” the spokesperson said.

In many organizations ignoring a problem and pretending it does not exist can make it go away or morph into a new and different problem. Its like wild things growing in a forest. You stop dealing with it and you no longer know what comes next. Maybe that is the best answer for now. Who knows what the operational definition of "responsible" is. That needs to be defined first and then everyone can take stock of whether they are meeting the bar or not. This decision taken by Meta fits in nicely a proposal that popped up recently that calls for companies to self-regulate. Maybe not having anyone responsible for responsible AI is one way to self-regulate - have each team make their own judgement call and be done with it. Throw caution to the winds.

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