Elon Musk Fires Twitter’s Ethical AI Team, Sacked Employees Confirm Layoffs Through Tweets

Twitter's ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability team Director, Rumman Chowdhury shared a tweet announcing that she has been laid off by the company.

Written by Richa Sharma | Updated: 4 November 2022 23:34 IST

Elon Musk Fires Twitter’s Ethical AI Team, Sacked Employees Confirm Layoffs Through Tweets

Twitter locked out fired employees from their official Google and Slack accounts

Highlights

Ethical AI team's work had been put on hold after Elon Musk's acquisition
Joan Deitchman confirmed that the entire the team has been laid off
Twitter marketing, communications department in India has been sacked

Elon Musk, the new Twitter head, has been laying off employees across teams in global offices. The SpaceX CEO has recently sacked the entire Ethical AI team, as confirmed by fired employees in their tweets. The Director of the ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability team at Twitter, Rumman Chowdhury, shared a tweet earlier in the day announcing that she has been laid off by the company. This was soon followed by farewell messages from several other team members, confirming that they have been let go under the global layoffs hinted by Musk on Thursday.

In a post verifying the news about the recent firings, Rumman Chowdhury talked about feeling the “relief that you're the one on the receiving end of the Thanos' snap”.

Imagine feeling relief that you're the one on the receiving end of the thanos snap 🫰
— Rumman Chowdhury (@ruchowdh) November 4, 2022

She also shared a picture of her logged out account details, mentioning that her credentials have been changed.

Has it already started? Happy layoff eve! pic.twitter.com/0AcaQjGJvm
— Rumman Chowdhury (@ruchowdh) November 4, 2022

According to a Wired report, Chowdhury was quoted earlier this week as saying that her team's work has been put on hold after Musk's acquisition. “We were told, in no uncertain terms, not to rock the boat,” she said.

Another employee from the Ethical AI team, former Senior Engineer Manager at Twitter's META, Joan Deitchman, posted a tweet thanking her group members for being “full of integrity.”

In a follow-up tweet, Deitchman confirmed that the entire the team has been laid off. She also elaborated on the team's current development and their work towards pushing for “algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice.”

🫡 Yep, the team is gone. The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone.
— Joan Deitchman (@JoanDeitchman) November 4, 2022

This is not the only team that have been fired by the new Twitter CEO under the recent management changes. In India, Twitter has fired the majority of its over 200 employees as part of mass layoffs across the globe layoffs.

Sources said the layoffs are across engineering, sales and marketing, and communications teams. It has also being said that the entire marketing and communications department in India has been sacked.

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