More than 1,200 Google employees condemn firing of their artificial intelligence ethics researchers

Over 1,200 Google employees and more than 1,500 university researchers they overwhelmingly condemned the dismissal of Timnit Gebru, a scientist who studies the ethics of artificial intelligence, said she was fired by Google after the company tried deleted their research and criticized their diversity efforts.

Gebru, who was co-technical director of Google’s artificial intelligence team, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that she was fired after sending an email to an internal group of women working in the AI ​​unit of the company.

The email, which was first published by the tech newsletter Platform, referred to a dispute over a research article, but more broadly expressed frustration Google Diversity Programs.

There, Gebru argued that “there is no accountability” or a real incentive for Google’s leadership to change. “Your life gets worse when you start standing up for underrepresented people, you start upsetting other leaders,” Gebru wrote. “There is no way that other documents, or more conversations, could accomplish anything.”

Here’s how the scientist put it on Twitter:

I would post my email here but my corporate account has been terminated. I feel bad for my teammates, but it’s better for me to meet the beast than to pretend. @negar_rz never had a clue that things were going to escalate so quickly.

The mail with the news

In the e-mail in question, sent to the Google employee groups “Brain Women” and “Allies listserv”, Gebru, who she was fired last wednesdayShe was very harsh on the company and even encouraged her colleagues to “stop writing documents because they were not successful” and complained that no one in the company was listening to her.

After sending this message, Gebru asked his superiors to change certain conditions in the workplace or would leave the companyand the response she received from them was that, as they could not accept the terms she had set, they accepted her resignation immediately.

“We think your job termination should come sooner than your email reflects, as some aspects of the email you sent to employees reflect behavior that is not what you expected from a Google director“Her 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 known for a study she conducted in 2018, in collaboration with la investigadora del Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Joy Buolamwini, in which they found that facial recognition systems failed more often in people with dark skin than in those with light tones.

In addition to her work as Director of Ethics at Artificial Intelligence, Gebru has been particularly active within Google in recruiting and promoting black people, and she had been critical repeatedly with their employer for the treatment they receive in the corporate culture.