This is also a moment of reckoning beyond Google.
Gebru’s firing has overthrown a working understanding of what kind of research Google will permit.
Research integrity can no longer be taken for granted in Google’s corporate research environment, and Dr. Gebru, and it heralds danger for people working for ethical and just AI - especially Black people and People of Color - across Google. The termination is an act of retaliation against Dr. Gebru asked them to explain this decision and to take accountability for it, and for their lackluster stand on discriminatory and harassing workplace conditions. In late November, five weeks after the piece had been internally reviewed and approved for publication through standard processes, Google leadership made the decision to censor it, without warning or cause. Gebru and her colleagues worked for months on a paper that was under review at an academic conference. Gebru pushed back against Google’s censorship of her (and her colleagues’) research, which focused on examining the environmental and ethical implications of large-scale AI language models (LLMs), which are used in many Google products. The contents of this email are important. Gebru, these executives informed her that her termination was immediate, and pointed to an email she sent to a Google Brain diversity and inclusion mailing list as pretext. Gebru’s team on the evening of December 2, 2020, Google executives claimed that she had chosen to resign. Gebru has faced defensiveness, racism, gaslighting, research censorship, and now a retaliatory firing. Instead of being embraced by Google as an exceptionally talented and prolific contributor, Dr. Gebru is a pathbreaking scientist doing some of the most important work to ensure just and accountable AI and to create a welcoming and diverse AI research field. Her research accomplishments are extensive, and have profoundly impacted academic scholarship and public policy. Gebru was one of very few Black women Research Scientists at the company, which boasts a dismal 1.6% Black women employees overall. We call on Google Research to strengthen its commitment to research integrity and to unequivocally commit to supporting research that honors the commitments made in Google’s AI Principles. Timnit Gebru, who was terminated from her position as Staff Research Scientist and Co-Lead of Ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) team at Google, following unprecedented research censorship. We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with Dr.
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