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Microsoft Whistleblower Alerts FTC on Company’s Lack of Responsible AI

Wednesday, March 6, 2024Wednesday, March 6, 2024By William Mapp
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Microsoft Whistleblower Alerts FTC on Company’s Lack of Responsible AI

There’s no shortage of examples of corporate AIs running rampant. What is rare is an AI company employee taking a responsible stance on the technology.

Earlier this week, Shane Jones, a Microsoft software engineering manager sent an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission and Microsoft’s Board of Directors regarding the dangers of the company’s latest AI product. In December 2023, Shane Jones was testing Copilot Designer, a generative design tool. Copilot Designer uses DALL-E 3, OpenAI’s latest edition of its image generation software.

Jones was working as a member of a red team. Red teams adversarially test software applications looking flaws and unusual behavior on negative input. Jones was entering adversarial prompts that didn’t get blocked by Copilot Designer’s software. Copilot Designer proceeded to generate sexually explicit and radical images featuring monsters and demons against the backdrop of anti-abortion and other vitriolic messages.

Management Did Nothing

Jones reported his findings to Copilot Designer’s management. They told him to talk to OpenAI about his results. After getting nowhere for 3 months he sent letters to the FTC and Microsoft’s Board this month.

After all the talk and marketing on Microsoft practicing responsible AI, nothing was done. Jones sent letters to internal channels and even posted his findings on LinkedIn. Jones tried to do the right thing and instead took the extreme step of alerting the feds and the Board.

A Disturbing Pattern

I’ve always cautioned people to be careful about using systems made by people who really aren’t people friendly. From social networks to today’s newest AI, there’s not a lot of joy about humanity from those people. If so, they would do a better job of keeping their products in guardrails and make them more humanistic.

These incidents will continue. Amazon’s latest shopping assistant is pretty useless. Gemini has proven racist. Air Canada’s bot gives bad advice, and none of these companies want to be held accountable for the systems they release.

As consumers we need to be more discerning of where our time and our dollars are spent. Shane Jones still works for Microsoft. I wonder for how long.

DALL-E 2 is pretty ridiculous. There are so many things wrong with this image.