Google workers demand reinstatement and apology for fired Black AI ethics researcher

Google employees have sent a letter to senior leadership demanding that the company reinstate and apologize to Timnit Gebru, a prominent Black researcher who said she was fired after criticizing the company’s diversity efforts.

Gebru’s departure in early December has sparked outrage among Google staff and the industry at large. The letter – sent by Gebru’s colleagues on Google’s AI ethics team to the company’s top management, including CEO Sundar Pichai – demands they offer Gebru a chance to return to the company at a higher position, in addition to making a public commitment to uphold research integrity and integrate racial literacy training. The letter also asks that management not to retaliate against the team for speaking out about Gebru’s case.

Bloomberg first reported news of the letter, which has been confirmed by the Guardian.

Ex-engineer sues Google, saying he was fired for condemning diversity memo

Read more

Gebru, formerly the Google AI unit’s technical co-lead, earlier this month said that a senior manager told her that she would have to retract a paper she had co-authored arguing that technology companies should do more to ensure that gender biases and offensive language are not exacerbated by AI systems designed to mimic human language.

“I felt like we were being censored and thought this had implications for all of ethical AI research,” Gebru told Wired after her departure. “You’re not going to have papers that make the company happy all the time and don’t point out problems. That’s antithetical to what it means to be that kind of researcher.”

The letter to management was sent on behalf of Google’s ethical AI employees by Alex Hanna, a senior research scientist on the team. It comes following a public letter of support for Gebru, signed by nearly 2,700 Google employees and more than 4,300 academic researchers and other supporters, and a public statement from Gebru’s colleagues disputing a company executive’s claim that she had resigned, rather than been fired.

The decision to directly address Google leadership came as members of the ethical AI team struggle to continue everyday work, amid the ongoing controversy. “It’s been really hard to do our work because we don’t even know what’s coming next,” Hanna told the Guardian.

Dr. Alex Hanna
(@alexhanna)

Google could make it right and show a commitment to ethical AI. https://t.co/Tc0X8jSur2

December 17, 2020

The earlier public letter by Google employees, posted to Medium on 3 December, makes some of the same demands outlined in the letter sent to management. It accuses Google of subjecting Gebru to “defensiveness, racism, gaslighting, research censorship, and … a retaliatory firing”.

Google did not immediately respond to a query from the Guardian. The company has maintained that Gebru resigned.