Google sacked one of its artificial intelligence ethics researchers

Artificial intelligence is more and more present in everyone’s life. Anyone who has a cell phone that says “it’s time to go to work” or a messaging system that “suggests” answers, even if they don’t know it, is using this technology.

But of course, many of these innovations need to be regulated, evaluated and know what the risks are. Although sometimes companies can disagree with their own employees.

Google sacked Timnit Gebru, one of its leading researchers in the ethics of artificial intelligence (IA), as reported by the data subject. She claimed the decision was in retaliation to an internal email she sent.

In the email in question, sent to the Google employee groups “Brain Women” and “Allies listserv”, Gebru, who was fired this week, she was very hard on the company and even encouraged his colleagues to “Stop writing documents because they do nothing” and she complained because no one in the company was listening to her.

After sending this message, Gebru forced his superiors to modify certain working conditions or she would leave the company, and the response she received from them was that, as they could not agree to the terms she had set, they immediately accepted her resignation.

“We believe that your termination should come sooner than your email reflects, as some aspects of the email you sent to employees reflect behaviors that do not correspond to what is expected of a Google directorHer bosses responded, as she shared on Twitter.

Born in Ethiopia, Gebru graduated from Stanford University (USA) in Electrical Engineering and before joining Google, she worked for Apple and Microsoft.

The engineer is particularly well known for a study she conducted in 2018, in collaboration with Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in which they found that facial recognition systems fail more often when these are people with a skin tone. dark shades compared to light shades.

In addition to her work as Director of Ethics at Artificial Intelligence, Gebru has been particularly active within Google for hire and promote black people, and had repeatedly criticized his employer for the treatment they receive in the corporate culture.