The withering email that got an ethical AI researcher fired at Google

This post is free for all to read thanks to the investment Platformer subscribers have made in independent journalism. If this work is meaningful to you, I invite you to become a subscriber today. Last week, a prominent a co-leader of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team at Google sent an email to her colleagues. Timnit Gebru had been working on a research paper that she hoped to publish, but ran into resistance from her superiors at Google. And so she sent a letter expressing her frustration to the internal listserv Google Brain Women and Allies. A few days later, Gebru was fired — Google reportedly found the email “inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager.” It details the struggles Gebru experienced as a Black leader working on ethics research within the company, and presents a bleak view of the path forward for underrepresented minorities at the company. Gebru is well known and respected in the AI ethics community; here are Shelly Banjo and Mark Bergen on her backg

This post is free for all to read thanks to the investment Platformer subscribers have made in independent journalism. If this work is meaningful to you, I invite you to become a subscriber today. Last week, a prominent a co-leader of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team at Google sent an email to her colleagues. Timnit Gebru had been working on a research paper that she hoped to publish, but ran into resistance from her superiors at Google. And so she sent a letter expressing her frustration to the internal listserv Google Brain Women and Allies. A few days later, Gebru was fired — Google