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Google’s corporate culture is once again embroiled in controversy.
AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru – a well-respected pioneer in her field and one of the few black women to be leaders in the industry – said earlier this week that Google fired her after blocking publication of his research on biases in AI systems. Days before Gebru’s departure, she sent a scathing internal memo to her colleagues detailing how senior Google executives tried to crush her searches. She also criticized her department for what she described as a continued lack of diversity within her staff.
In its widely read internal email, posted by Platformer, Gebru said the company is “silencing in the most fundamental way possible” and claimed that “your life gets worse when you start advocating for people under represented ”at Google.
After Gebru left, Google’s chief AI research officer Jeff Dean sent a note to Gebru’s department Thursday morning saying that after an internal review his research paper did not meet publication standards. of the company. According to Gebru, the company also told him that his critical note to his colleagues was “incompatible with the expectations of a Google official”.
A Google representative declined to comment. Gebru did not respond to a request for comment.
Gebru’s claim of being kicked out of the powerful tech company under questionable circumstances is causing a stir among tech and academic communities, many prominent researchers, civil rights leaders and Gebru colleagues on AI of Google speaking publicly on Twitter in its defense. A petition to support it has already received the signatures of more than 740 Google employees and more than 1,000 academics, nonprofit leaders and industry peers. His departure is significant because it touches on broader tensions around racial diversity in Silicon Valley as well as whether or not academics have enough freedom to publish research, even if it is controversial, while working in large companies that control the development of powerful technologies and have their own interests to consider.
What led to Gebru’s departure
People are still trying to find out exactly what led to the departure of Gebru from Google.
What we do know is that Gebru and several of his colleagues were planning to present a research paper at an upcoming academic conference on unintended consequences in natural language processing systems, which are the tools used in the field. computer science to understand and automate the creation of entries. words and audio. Research by Gebru and his colleagues, according to the New York Times, “has exposed flaws in a new generation of language technologies, including a system built by Google that underpins the company’s search engine.” . He also reportedly discussed the environmental consequences of large-scale computer systems used to power natural language processing programs.
As part of Google’s process, Gebru submitted the document to Google for internal review before it was released more widely. Google determined the document fell short of its standards because it “ignored too much relevant research,” according to Dean’s memo sent Thursday.
Dean also said in his post that Google rejected Gebru’s article for publication because it submitted it one day before the publication deadline instead of the required two weeks.
Gebru requested further discussion with Google before removing the document, according to the Times. If Google couldn’t address her concerns, Gebru said she would resign from the company.
Google told Gebru that he could not meet his conditions and that the company was accepting his resignation immediately.
It’s a standard process for a company like Google to review its employees’ searches before they are published outside of them. But former colleagues and outside industry researchers defending Gebru have questioned whether Google is arbitrarily applying its rules more strictly in this scenario.
“It just seems strange that someone who has had books written about her, who is quoted and cited daily, would be fired because an article was not properly edited,” said Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist. head of responsible AI at Accenture Applied Intelligence and has now started his own company called Parity. Chowdhury has no affiliation with Google.
The conflict and Gebru’s dismissal / resignation reflect growing tension between researchers studying the ethics of AI and the big tech companies that employ them.
It’s also another example of deep and enduring issues dividing part of Google’s workforce. On Wednesday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint that Google had spied on its workers and likely violated labor law by sacking two militant employees last year.
After several years of turmoil within Google’s workforce over issues ranging from Google’s controversial plans to work with the U.S. military to sexual harassment of its employees, the past few months have been relatively calm. Instead, the company’s biggest public pressure has come from an antitrust legal review and unproven accusations by Republican lawmakers that Google’s products display anti-conservative bias. But Gebru’s case and the recent NLRB complaint show that the company is still waging internal battles.
“What Timnit has done is present rigorous but important assessments of how the company’s efforts are going with diversity and inclusion initiatives and how to fix that,” said Laurence Berland, a former engineer. of Google who was fired after organizing her colleagues around a worker. problems and one of the employees challenges his dismissal with the NLRB. “It was passionate, but it wasn’t just non-constructive,” he said.
Why Gebru’s departure is important
In the relatively new and developing field of ethical AI, Gebru is not only a foundational researcher, but a role model for many young academics. She is also the head of key groups like Black in AI, which promote greater diversity in the largely male-dominated AI field in the United States.
(Although Google doesn’t list its demographics specifically for its artificial intelligence research department, it does share its diversity numbers every year. Only 24.7% of its technical workforce is female and 2.4% are Black, according to its 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Report.)
“Timnit is a pioneer. She is one of the founders of responsible and ethical artificial intelligence, ”said Chowdhury. “Computer scientists and engineers are entering the field thanks to her.”
In 2018, Gebru and fellow researcher Joy Buolamwini published groundbreaking research showing facial recognition software incorrectly identified darker-skinned people and women at much higher rates than darker-skinned people and men. lighter skin.
Her work has contributed to a wider consideration in the tech industry of the unintended consequences of AI that is formed on datasets that can marginalize minorities and women, reinforcing existing societal inequalities.
AI academics outside of Google fear that Gebru’s dismissal could scare other researchers away from publishing important research that could work on their employers’ toes.
“Researchers don’t know how they’re going to continue doing this work in the industry,” said Moritz Hardt, professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, who specializes in machine learning and has studied equity in IA. “It’s a scary time, I would say.
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