More than being created to create jobs, I suspect things like ethics teams are mainly created for PR purposes, to make the company look good -- and in fact, the "product" they are expected to produce are defenses against the company looking bad, keep the actual product teams from doing things that make the company look bad. (Whether they are given the tools to succeed at this is another question, but it's not like people not given the tools to succeed at large organizations is unusual!)
If an AI product makes Microsoft look really bad publicly due to something understood by the public as an ethical concern, the ethics team will be back.
> More than being created to create jobs, I suspect things like ethics teams are mainly created for PR purposes, to make the company look good -- and in fact, the "product" they are expected to produce are defenses against the company looking bad
Definitely are positions invented by lawyers to provide a safe harbor to minimize corporate legal and PR liabilities while those PR liabilities are burning bright among the public. Practically to the minute that the public focus on DEI is distracted to whatever the “next thing” is you will see these positions start disappearing or absorbed into HR and some new position created to satisfy the optics and create a new safe harbor for the next thing.
If an AI product makes Microsoft look really bad publicly due to something understood by the public as an ethical concern, the ethics team will be back.