A prominent artificial intelligence computer scientist who helped pioneer research into facial recognition software's bias against people of color says she was fired by Google for sending an email criticizing the company's treatment of minorities, and says she felt the same way all the time.
Timnit Gebru, who announced her firing from the company on her Twitter, was leaving her position as head of Ethical Artificial Intelligence , where she led research that helped establish the company's status as a leader in assessing the fairness and risks of technology.
Google has yet to comment on the incident. Gebru said Wednesday that she was fired by Jeff Dean, Google's head of AI, over an email she sent to Brain Women and Allies, a mailing list for researchers in the company's AI team known as Google Brain.
Her firing has reignited anger at Google over its treatment of its employees, and it's not the first time the company has fired employees who voiced their dissatisfaction with its practices.
Inioluwa Deborah Raji, an AI researcher and Mozilla who had worked with her, said Gebru helped give Google an air of legitimacy and credibility as it tried to portray itself as committed to ethical research.
Despite Google's reputation as a leader in AI ethics in the tech industry, its efforts have been marred by controversy and internal criticism. The company disbanded the AI Ethics Council, an external council it had created just weeks earlier, in March 2019, after employees protested the addition of Heritage Foundation president Kay Cole James, who had no experience in AI and had recently shared racist views against immigrants and transgender people.
Gebru had managed to achieve a position not often held by people of color. As an Ethiopian-American woman with a senior role at the tech giant, she became known for her work on social biases and the impact of technology.
She was also a co-founder of Black in AI, an advocacy group that promotes more jobs for black people in AI technology. She has also regularly criticized technology companies, including Google, for failing to hire more employees of color and treating them differently when they work for them.
The tensions between Gebru and the company stemmed from her team’s research, which criticized AI systems known as large-scale language models. The company may one day seek to harness such systems in consumer-facing products that could create convincing pieces of text that are difficult to tell apart from human speech.
In an open letter Thursday afternoon, a group of 236 Google employees and 350 supporters from academia, industry and civil society issued a list of demands to Google Research, including asking the Dean to meet with the Ethical AI group to explain the decision to “censor” Gebru’s research. The group also demanded broader transparency. “This is a matter of public concern, and there must be public accountability to ensure trust in Google Research going forward,” the letter says.
One of the signatories was Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a group that raises awareness about the impact of AI technology. “The firing of Timnit for having the audacity to demand intellectual integrity seriously undermines Google’s credibility in supporting rigorous research and for the ethics of AI and algorithmic control,” Buolamwini told the Post. “She deserves much more than what Google offered her, and she is now a famous and free agent who will continue to transform the tech industry.”
Alex Hanna, a researcher on Gebru's team, wrote on Twitter that Dean "sent a message to the entire research organization, spreading misinformation and misconceptions about the circumstances of Gebru's firing. She added, 'Google researchers: don't believe it.'"
