Meta names four men to a new tech advisory council, months after disbanding its Responsible AI division
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- Meta formed a product advisory council six months after disbanding its Responsible AI division.
- Four white male tech execs sit on the new council, called Meta Advisory Group.
- The council comes amid rising concerns over artificial intelligence oversight.
Meta announced the formation of a product advisory council on Wednesday, six months after it disbanded its Responsible AI division.
The council consists of four men, who will "periodically consult with" Meta's management team about new technologies and products, according to the group's website.
The Meta Advisory Group consists of four executives: payment platform Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, and former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst.
The members will not be paid and operate separately from the board of directors, a spokesperson for Meta told Bloomberg.
The council's announcement comes weeks after Meta's first quarter earnings when CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company will continue to pour into massive AI investments, even if they take time to pay off.
As Big Tech continues to spend billions on AI, users and those in the industry worry about governance, data privacy, ethics, and safety risks, saying that programs to keep AI in check haven't kept up with new innovations.
The new council is reminiscent of Meta's Responsible AI division, a group in charge of regulating the safety of the company's artificial intelligence ventures as they were created and deployed. The group, which had about 40 employees, was axed in November following a series of cost-cutting measures, including prior layoffs for that team.
All four men on the new council are white and share similar tech executive backgrounds, which has drawn attention to the lack of diversity in their gender, race, and professional history. Several tech investors on X highlighted the council's lack of representation.
Four of the company's 11 board members are women.
The company did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside standard business hours, about the new council, including about its all-male composition.
Meet the new advisory group: