Dr Timnit Gebru, the Ethiopian artificial intelligence computer scientist was recently bluntly fired by Google because of a problem concerning with her co-authored academic paper.
The abrupt firing of one of the most high-profile Black women in AI shows that Google is pushing back on the kind of scrutiny that it claims to welcome https://t.co/g4rkAQQxHs
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 23, 2020
She was fired by the head of Google’s al division, Dr Jeff Dean, from her post of co-leader of Google’s ethical artificial intelligence team. Where her researches have aided Google’s company to upraise to leader status.
She announced on Twitter that she has been fired but she has resigned according to google. According to Dr Timnit Gebru, Google and big tech are institutionally racists that caused her to leave. Dr Dean wrote in a statement to the staff about her paper that “Dr Gebru’s paper included valid points but some important gaps that hurdled in the way of putting google affiliation to it.”
Gebru’s rejected research
Gebru is a colossus in the technical world and she has devoted herself fully to Google or research Al workforce.
The reason behind Google rejecting the paper was the exclusion of relevant topic research. The paper was about problems of Al language model as well as women and cultural minorities structural prejudice. She also researched on facial identification software’s credibility against racialized people.
Termination by different search sites and companies
More than 6000 people have signed a letter which requires the reason for rejecting the academic paper. These people also include salient Google researches, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook Amazon and Netflix.
The open letter called her termination an ‘unequalled research censorship’.
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The letter said, “Dr Gebru is being faced by excessive sensitivity to criticism, racism, gaslighting, research censorship and retribution termination instead of being accepted by company as an extraordinarily talented and fecund contributor.”
It further said, “This has become a public concerning issue and it needs public answerability to confirm any belief in google research going forward.”
Timnit Gebru asked for a resignation
In a separate email to employees he said that she told google about her resign if her desires about her work were not fulfilled, that’s why google accepted her act.
“We need to accept responsibility for the reality that a spectacular black female leader with vast talent left Google unhappy.” Said Mr Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google. “It is implausibly necessary for me that our black women and underrepresented googlers know that we value you and you do belong to Google.”
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Dr Gebru has emailed her coworkers that she felt continuously brutalized and condemned the company’s uniformity. As she was fired because she sent an email to brain women and Allies, A mailing list for researchers called google brain. In which she censured the company’s behaviour towards minority workers.
Timnit Gebru deserves better as a research worker
She wrote in the email, “Stop writing your document because it doesn’t matter anyway. Your life gets worse when you start pleading for underrepresented people. You start making other leaders disturbed. They don’t want to give you good ratings during standardization.”
At Google’s company, only 1.6 per cent of a black woman included in the workforce. So, Dr Timnit Gebru resignation has also focused towards uncertainty about heterogeneity and conclusion.
The founder of Algorithmic Justice League, Joy Buolamwini, said in a statement, “Dr Timnit Gebru deserves more than Google knew how to give and now she is an all-star free agent who will continue to alter the tech industry.