'Please do not reach out to me': Microsoft VP's cold message for Google Deepmind employees | Today news

Nando de Freitas, vice president of Microsoft AI, has publicly criticized Google Deepmind over his employee contracts, claiming that staff members of the company regularly seek advice on how to escape from limiting notice periods and non-competitive clauses. In a post on X, De Freitas congratulated Deepmind on the recent progress of the model, but emphasized what he described as a worrying workplace culture. He claimed that Deepmind employees regularly approach him in “despair” to ask for help to bypass contractual restrictions and even inquire about jobs at Microsoft AI. He further claimed that some employees were informed by their managers that the search for external job offers was a way to internal promotion. “Please do not reach out to me. Rather reach out to each other, ‘De Freitas called on Deepmind employees and instructed them to get involved with their leadership instead. He specifically mentioned Deepmind’s Koray Kavukcuoglu and Douglas Eck, saying that both previously opposed opposition to such employment practices. De Freitas strongly advised to sign restrictive contracts, arguing that no US corporation should have such an impact on employees, especially in Europe. He characterized these contract terms as a ‘abuse of power’. His remarks have fresh investigation into the service policy in the technology industry, especially at leading AI research firms, where non-competitive clauses and extensive notice periods have been criticized for limiting work mobility and innovation. Deepmind has not yet responded to the allegations in public. Meanwhile, in other news, Microsoft has scaled back its efforts to expand the data center across various regions, which is an indication of a re -evaluation of its infrastructure investments amid the development of the artificial intelligence demand (AI) and cloud services. The technology giant has either delayed or extracted from projects in places, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Indonesia and various sites in the United States, Bloomberg reports with reference to sources. As a dominant power in commercial AI, mainly because of its partnership with Openai, Microsoft’s infrastructure spending is closely monitored by investors. The company’s decision to delay the developments of the data center expressed concern about the long-term question of AI services and cloud computing.