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Google’s workplace culture is once again embroiled in controversy.
AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru – a respected pioneer in her field and one of the few leading black women in the field – said earlier this week that Google has fired her after blocking the publication of his research on bias in AI systems. A few days before Gebru’s departure, he sent a sharp internal memo to his colleagues, detailing how Google’s top executives tried to crush his search. He also criticized his department for what he described as a continuing lack of diversity among its staff.
In his widely read internal email, which was published by Platformer, Gebru said the company was “silencing in the most fundamental way possible” and claimed that “your life gets worse when you start defending underrepresented people” in Google. .
After Gebru’s departure, Google’s AI search chief Jeff Dean sent a note to the Gebru department on Thursday morning saying that, after an internal review, his research paper did not meet the company’s standards for publication. . According to Gebru, the company also told her that its critical note to her colleagues was “inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager.”
A Google rep declined to comment. Gebru did not respond to a request for comment.
Gebru’s accusation of being expelled from the powerful tech firm in questionable circumstances is causing a stir in the tech and academic communities, with many prominent researchers, civil rights leaders, and Gebru’s Google AI colleagues speaking publicly on Twitter in her defense. A petition to support it has already received the signatures of more than 740 Google employees and over 1,000 academics, nonprofits and industry peers. His departure is significant because it affects the broader tensions around racial diversity in Silicon Valley and whether or not academics have enough freedom to publish research, albeit controversial, while working at major companies that control the development of powerful technologies and have their own business interests to consider.
What led to the departure of Gebru
People are still trying to unravel exactly what led to Gebru’s departure 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 the unintended consequences in natural language processing systems, which are the tools used in computer science to understand and automate. the creation of written texts. words and audio. Research by Gebru and his colleagues, according to the New York Times, “has identified flaws in a new generation of language technology, 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 published more broadly. Google determined that the document did not live up to its standards because it “ignored too many relevant searches,” according to a memo sent by Dean on Thursday.
Dean also stated in his memo that Google refused publication of the Gebru document because it submitted it one day before the deadline for publication instead of the required two weeks.
Gebru called for further discussions with Google before withdrawing the paper, according to the Times. If Google couldn’t answer her concerns, Gebru said she would step down from the company.
Google told Gebru it couldn’t meet his conditions and the company was immediately accepting his resignation.
It is a standard process for a company like Google to review their employee search before it is posted outside of it. But former colleagues and outside industry researchers defending Gebru wondered if Google was arbitrarily enforcing its rules more rigorously in this scenario.
“It seems strange that someone who has books written about her, who is quoted and quoted on a daily basis, is let go because an article has not been properly revised,” said Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist who is the first Head of Responsible. AI at Accenture Applied Intelligence and has now launched his own company called Parity. Chowdhury has no affiliation with Google.
The conflict and Gebru’s layoff / resignation reflect a growing tension between researchers studying AI ethics and the major tech companies that employ them.
It’s also another example of deep, ongoing problems dividing parts 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 laws when it fired two employee activists last year.
After several years of turmoil in Google’s workforce over issues ranging from Google’s controversial plans to work with the US military to sexual harassment of its employees, the past few months have been relatively quiet. Instead, the company’s biggest public pressure has come from antitrust legal scrutiny and unsubstantiated allegations by Republican lawmakers that Google’s products show anti-conservative bias. But the case of Gebru and the recent NLRB complaint show the company is still fighting internal battles.
“What Timnit did was present some tough but important assessments of how the company’s efforts with diversity and inclusion initiatives are going and how to correct the course on that,” said Laurence Berland, a former Google engineer who He was fired after organizing his colleagues around problem workers and one of the employees contesting his dismissal at the NLRB. “It was passionate, but it wasn’t just not constructive,” he said.
Why Gebru’s departure is important
In the relatively new and developing field of ethical AI, Gebru is not only a fundamental researcher, but a role model for many young academics. He is also the leader of key groups like Black in AI, which are promoting greater diversity in the largely white and male-dominated AI field in the United States.
(Although Google doesn’t expose its demographics specifically for its AI research department, it shares its diversity numbers every year. Only 24.7% of its technical workforce are women and 2.4% are according to its 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Report.)
“Timnit is a pioneer. She is one of the founders of responsible and ethical artificial intelligence, ”Chowdhury said. “Computer scientists and engineers enter the field thanks to her.”
In 2018, Gebru and another researcher, Joy Buolamwini, published groundbreaking research showing that facial recognition software has identified darker-skinned people and women incorrectly at much higher rates than people and men from lighter skin.
His work has contributed to a broader showdown in the tech sector on the unwanted consequences of AI being trained on datasets that can marginalize minorities and women, reinforcing existing social inequalities.
Outside of Google, academics in the AI field are concerned that Gebru’s firing may scare other researchers from publishing important research that could trample their employers on.
“It is not clear to researchers how they will continue to do this work in the industry,” said UC Berkeley computer science professor Moritz Hardt, who specializes in machine learning and has studied equity in AI. “It’s a chilling moment, I’d say.”
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