A Prominent AI Ethics Researcher Says Google Fired Her - WIRED

The paper discussed ethical issues raised by recent advances in AI technology that works with language, which Google has said is important to the future of its business.

She helped assemble and lead a small team of computer and social scientists dedicated to ethics research inside Google’s AI research group.

Gebru says she pushed back on the treatment of her work out of concern for the future of AI ethics research at Google, and people who work on it.

Gebru’s departure was set in motion when she collaborated with researchers inside and outside of Google on a research paper discussing ethical issues raised by recent advances in AI language software.

Tuesday Gebru emailed back offering a deal: If she received a full explanation of what happened, and the research team met with management to agree on a process for fair handling of future research, she would remove her name from the paper.

She included a description of her dispute about the language paper as an example of how Google managers can silence people from marginalized groups.

Wednesday, Gebru says she learned from her direct reports that they had been told Gebru had resigned from Google and that her resignation had been accepted.

An email sent by a manager to Gebru’s personal address said her resignation should take effect immediately because she had sent an email reflecting “behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager.” Gebru took to Twitter, and outrage quickly grew among AI researchers online.

Many criticizing Google, both from inside and outside the company, noted that the company had at a stroke damaged the diversity of its AI workforce and also lost a prominent advocate for improving that diversity.

Gebru suspects her treatment was in part motivated by her outspokenness around diversity and Google’s treatment of people from marginalized groups.

"We have been pleading for representation but there are barely any Black people in Google Research, and from what I see none in leadership whatsoever," she says.

Thursday, Google’s research head Jeff Dean sent an email to company researchers claiming that Gebru’s paper “didn’t meet our bar for publication” and that she had submitted it for internal review later than the company requires.

“Even if we put aside the censorship of the article, firing a researcher that way is chilling,” says Julien Cornebise, an honorary associate professor at University College London who previously worked at Alphabet’s London AI lab DeepMind, and has talked with AI researchers inside and outside of Google about Gebru’s plight.