Google AI Researcher’s Departure Ignites New Conflict Over Ethics
The sudden exit of Timnit Gebru has aggravated concerns about whether the search giant is doing right by its AI researchers and its Black employees
By Dina Bass, Gerrit De Vynck, Shelly Banjo and Mark Bergen
Google has gotten itself into another management crisis. On Dec. 2, Timnit Gebru, an artificial intelligence researcher best known for showing how facial recognition algorithms are better at identifying White people than Black people, said she’d been fired. Gebru’s boss described her departure as a resignation, but both sides acknowledged the conflict centered on Google’s discomfort with a research paper Gebru planned to publish about ethical issues related to technology that underpins some of the company’s key products.
To date, over 2,300 Googlers and 3,700 others have signed onto a petition supporting Gebru. Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai sent an email on Dec. 9 apologizing to employees for how the company had handled her departure and promising to review the situation, saying it had “seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google.”
