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Timnit Gebru: Tensions In Google's Ethical AI Group Increase As It ...
CNN Business —
Tension between Google's Ethical AI group and executives at the company rose on Wednesday, as employees sent a list of demands regarding the recent departure of one of the team's leaders — a prominent Black woman in a field that's largely White and male.
The letter, sent to CEO Sundar Pichai, is titled "The future of Ethical AI at Google." It lays out the moves the researchers want the company to make in order to "rebuild trust" with the team and create an environment in which they can continue their work. The team researches the ethical repercussions of artificial intelligence and advises the company on AI policies and products.
It comes in the wake of the sudden exit of Timnit Gebru, who until early December was the co-leader of Google's Ethical AI team. She was also one of few Black employees at the company overall (3.7% of Google employees are Black, according to the company's 2020 annual diversity report) — let alone in its AI division. The research scientist is also co-founder of the group Black in AI, which aims to increase representation of Black people in the field.
The demands in the letter include the removal of a Google vice president, Megan Kacholia, from the team's management chain; for transparency surrounding Gebru's departure; and for Google's head of AI, Jeff Dean, and Kacholia to apologize for how Gebru was treated. It also calls for the company to offer Gebru a new, higher-level position, to commit publicly to the integrity of research conducted at Google, and to guarantee it won't harm any workers who advocated for Gebru.
In a message sent to Pichai and others that linked to the letter, Alex Hanna, a senior research scientist on the Ethical AI team, said it was sent on behalf of her team. A source familiar with the team said it includes roughly a dozen members.
First reported by Bloomberg, CNN Business also obtained a copy of the letter and confirmed its authenticity. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, December 2, Gebru tweeted that she had been "immediately fired" for an email she recently sent to Google's Brain Women and Allies internal mailing list. In the email she expressed dismay over the ongoing lack of diversity at the company and frustration over an internal process related to the review of a not-yet published research paper she coauthored.
In later tweets, Gebru clarified that no one at Google explicitly told her that she was fired. Rather, she said Google would not meet a number of her conditions for returning and accepted her resignation immediately because it felt that her email reflected "behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager."
Gebru's sudden exit quickly angered thousands of the company's employees and others in the tech and academic communities.
Google (GOOG) said on Wednesday, Dec. 9 that it would examine Gebru's departure. In a memo sent to Google (GOOG) employees, Pichai wrote the company needs to "assess the circumstances" that led up to Gebru leaving Google (GOOG) last week, and examine "where we could have improved and led a more respectful process."
"We will begin a review of what happened to identify all the points where we can learn — considering everything from de-escalation strategies to new processes we can put in place," he wrote in a memo that has been confirmed as authentic by CNN Business.
Gebru is known for her research into bias and inequality in AI, and in particular for a 2018 paper she coauthored that highlighted how poorly commercial facial-recognition software fared when attempting to classify women and people of color. Their work sparked widespread awareness of issues common in AI today, particularly when the technology is tasked with identifying anything about human beings.
Researchers Demand That Google Rehire And Promote Timnit Gebru After ...
Enlarge this image Former Google researcher Timnit Gebru says she was unexpectedly fired after a dispute over an academic paper and months of speaking out about the need for more women and people of color at the tech giant. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP hide caption
toggle caption Marcio Jose Sanchez/APFormer Google researcher Timnit Gebru says she was unexpectedly fired after a dispute over an academic paper and months of speaking out about the need for more women and people of color at the tech giant.
Marcio Jose Sanchez/APMembers of a prestigious research unit at Google have sent a letter to the company's chief executive demanding that ousted artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru be reinstated.
Gebru, who studies the ethics of AI and was one of the few Black research scientists at Google, says she was unexpectedly fired after a dispute over an academic paper and months of speaking out about the need for more women and people of color at the tech giant.
In a letter sent on Wednesday by members of Google's Ethical AI team to CEO Sundar Pichai, Gebru's former colleagues ask that she be rehired and promoted, among a host of other demands, according to a copy of the note obtained by NPR that was first reported by Bloomberg.
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Technology Google Employees Call Black Scientist's Ouster 'Unprecedented Research Censorship' "Offering Timnit her position back at a higher level would go a long way to help re-establish trust and rebuild our team environment," reads the letter sent by Google employee Alex Hanna on behalf of the Ethical AI team, which Gebru co-led before she was forced out. "The removal of Timnit has had a demoralizing effect on the whole of our team."
Since Gebru's termination earlier this month, more than 2,600 Googlers have signed an open letter expressing dismay over the way Gebru exited the company and asking executives for a full explanation of what prompted her dismissal.
In the letter from the AI team to Pichai, Gebru's former colleagues ask that Megan Kacholia, a vice president at Google Research whom the researchers accuse of going around the team's direct supervisor to fire Gebru, be removed from their reporting chain.
"We have lost confidence in Megan Kacholia," the researchers wrote, saying Gebru's firing happened "without warning rather than engaging in dialogue."
Google, which is owned by parent company Alphabet Inc., did not respond to a request for comment.
Technology Google CEO Apologizes, Vows To Restore Trust After Black Scientist's OusterGoogle has maintained that Gebru resigned, though Gebru says she never voluntarily agreed to leave the company. In a company email after the episode, Pichai acknowledged that the incident "seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google." He committed to rebuilding employees' trust and supporting independent research.
Yet in their letter to him on Wednesday, the researchers were doubtful their work could resume in the absence of major overhauls inside the company.
Gebru helped establish Black in AI, a group that supports Black researchers in the field of artificial intelligence. She also was the co-author of pioneering research into facial recognition technology that demonstrated how people of color and women are misidentified far more often than white faces. The study helped persuade IBM, Amazon and Microsoft to stop selling the technology to law enforcement.
At Google, Gebru's former team wrote in the Wednesday letter that studying ways to reduce the harm of AI on marginalized groups is key to their mission.
And they worried that Google's "short-term interests and immediate revenue agendas" could stand in the way of investigating sensitive areas of study.
Last month, Google abruptly asked Gebru to retract a research paper focused on the potential biases baked into an AI system that attempts to mimic human speech. The technology helps power Google's search engine. Google claims that the paper did not meet its bar for publication and that Gebru did not follow the company's internal review protocol.
Gebru and her supporters counter that she was being targeted because of how outspoken she was about diversity issues, a theme that was underscored in the letter.
"Google's short-sighted decision to fire and retaliate against a core member of the Ethical AI Team makes it clear that we need swift and structural changes if this work is to continue, and if the legitimacy of the field as a whole is to persevere."
The letter says Google's top brass have committed to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion among its research units, but unless more concrete and immediate action is taken, those promises are "virtue signaling; they are damaging, evasive, defensive and demonstrate leadership's inability to understand how our organization is part of the problem," according to the letter.
The AI team members also calls for Google's leadership to go through racial literacy training, arguing that "the toxicity" toward people of color on Google's research team "needs to stop."
They say Jeff Dean, senior vice president of Google Research, and other executives involved in Gebru's firing need to be held accountable. They want Dean to issue an apology to Gebru. They also ask that Google management stop referring to her ouster as a resignation, saying such "gaslighting" has caused harm to Gebru and the Black community at Google.
Sponsor MessageGoogle has a history of striking back against employees who agitate internally for change. Organizers of the worldwide walkouts at Google in 2018 over sexual harassment and other issues were fired by the company. And more recently, the National Labor Relation Board accused Google of illegally firing workers who were involved in union organizing.
This time, however, the researchers are pleading with Google not to demote, fire or otherwise punish anyone involved in supporting Gebru.
"We know from Google's past retaliation that they often proceed to harm and marginalize workers without outright firing them, especially those who have advocated for their colleagues," the researchers wrote to Pichai.
Google Widely Criticized After Parting Ways With Timnit Gebru, A ...
CNN Business —
Many Google employees and others in the tech and academic communities are furious over the sudden exit from Google of a pioneer in the study of ethics in artificial intelligence—a departure they see as a failure by an industry titan to foster an environment supportive of diversity.
Timnit Gebru is known for her research into bias and inequality in AI, and in particular for a 2018 paper she coauthored with Joy Buolamwini that highlighted how poorly commercial facial-recognition software fared when attempting to classify women and people of color. Their work sparked widespread awareness of issues common in AI today, particularly when the technology is tasked with identifying anything about human beings.
At Google, Gebru was the co-leader of the company's ethical AI team, and one of very few Black employees at the company overall (3.7% of Google's employees are Black according to the company's 2020 annual diversity report)— let alone in its AI division. The research scientist is also cofounder of the group Black in AI. On Wednesday night, Gebru tweeted that she had been "immediately fired" for an email she recently sent to Google's Brain Women and Allies internal mailing list.
In later tweets, Gebru clarified that no one at Google explicitly told her that she was fired. Rather, she said Google would not meet a number of her conditions for returning and accepted her resignation immediately because it felt that her email reflected "behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager."
In the email, which was first published by the newsletter Platformer on Thursday, Gebru wrote that she felt "constantly dehumanized" at Google and expressed dismay over the ongoing lack of diversity at the company.
"Because there is zero accountability. There is no incentive to hire 39% women: your life gets worse when you start advocating for underrepresented people, you start making the other leaders upset when they don't want to give you good ratings during calibration. There is no way more documents or more conversations will achieve anything," she wrote.
Gebru also expressed frustration over an internal process related to the review of a research paper she coauthored with others at Google and outside the company that had not yet been published.
Gebru, who joined Google in late 2018, told CNN Business that the research paper in question was about the dangers of large language models — a growing trend in AI with the release of increasingly capable systems that can create impressively human-sounding text like recipes, poetry, and even news articles. This is also an area of AI that Google has shown it feels is key to its future in search.
Gebru said the paper had been submitted to the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, which will be held in March, and that there was nothing unusual about how the paper was submitted for internal review at Google. She said she wrote the email Tuesday evening after a long back and forth with Google AI leadership in which she was repeatedly told to retract the paper from consideration for presentation at the conference or remove her name from it.
Gebru told CNN Business that on Wednesday she was informed that she no longer worked at the company. "It really didn't have to be like this at all," Gebru said.
A Google spokeswoman said the company had no comment.
In an email sent to Google Research employees on Thursday that he posted publicly on Friday, Jeff Dean, Google's head of AI, told employees his perspective: that Gebru coauthored a paper but didn't give the company the required two weeks to review it before its deadline. The paper was reviewed internally, he wrote, but it "didn't meet our bar for publication."
Dean added: "Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day's notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted."
He said Gebru responded with demands that had to be met if she were to remain at Google. "Timnit wrote that if we didn't meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date," Dean wrote.
Gebru told CNN Business that her conditions included transparency about the way the paper was ordered to be retracted, as well as meetings with Dean and another AI executive at Google to talk about the treatment of researchers.
"We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google," Dean wrote. He also explained some of the company's research and review process and said he will be speaking with Google's research teams, including those on the ethical AI team "so they know that we strongly support these important streams of research."
Just after Gebru's initial tweet on Wednesday, coworkers and others quickly shared support for her online, including Margaret Mitchell, who had been Gebru's co-team leader at Google.
"Today dawns a new horrible life-changing loss in a year of horrible life-changing losses," Mitchell tweeted on Thursday. "I can't well articulate the pain of losing @timnitgebru as my co-lead. I've been able to excel because of her — like so many others. I'm mostly in shock."
"I have your back as you have always had mine," tweeted Buolamwini, who besides coauthoring on the 2018 paper with Gebru, is founder of the Algorithmic League. "You are brilliant and respected. You listen to those others readily ignore. You ask hard questions not to advance yourself but to uplift the communities we owe our foundations."
Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, tweeted, "I have learned so much from her about AI bias. What a disaster."
By midday Friday, a Medium post decrying her departure and demanding transparency about Google's decision regarding the research paper had gained the signatures of more than 1,300 Google employees and over 1,600 supporters within the academic and AI fields. Those sharing their support include numerous women who have fought inequality in the technology industry, such as Ellen Pao, CEO of Project Include and former CEO of Reddit; Ifeoma Ozoma, a former Google employee who founded Earthseed; and Meredith Whittaker, faculty director at the AI Now Institute and a core organizer of the 2018 Google Walkout, which protested sexual harassment and misconduct at the company. Others include Buolamwini, as well as Danielle Citron, a law professor who specializes in the study of online harassment at Boston University and a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.
Citron told CNN Business that she sees Gebru as a "leading light" when it comes to exposing, clarifying, and studying racism and embedded inequities that are perpetuated in algorithmic systems. Gebru showed how important it is to rethink how data is collected, she said, and ask questions about whether we should even use these systems, she said.
"WTF, Google?" she said. "Sorry, but you were so lucky she even came to work for you."
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