Google has lost two prominent members of its Ethics AI research team, reports . On Wednesday, researcher Alex Hanna and software engineer Dylan Baker left the company to join Timnit Gebru’s. . Gebru founded the nonprofit in December after she left the tech giant in .
Until the end of that year, Gebru was one of the co-leaders of Google’s Ethics AI research group. After publishing a Gebru claims Google fired her. However, the company maintained her resignation. In February 2021, some employees to protest Google’s handling of the situation. Later that month, the company laid off , another co-leader of the AI Ethics research group. Hanna and Baker said Bloomberg The layoffs weighed heavily on them, and they wanted to work with Gebru again.
“I’m quitting because I’m tired,” Hanna wrote on after announce her passing From the company. In many ways, the post is a call to action. “In other words, technology has a whiteness problem. Google is more than just a technology organization. Google is a white tech organization,” Hanna wrote. “More specifically, technology organizations are committed to preserving integrity through ‘interrelated practices, processes, actions, and meanings’, techniques that reinvent the organization. In this case, that means protecting their hiring, decentralization, and monetization policies. “
The post also addresses the central issue of Gebru’s dismissal from the company. Hanna said the claim Jeff Dean, Google’s head of AI, made about the robustness of the company’s publishing process was “ridiculous.” She points to the analysis team published in 2020. “Google leadership remained silent when an article on the Google Walkout site pointed out that there were many counterexamples, like how nearly half of the papers in the system were approved in the past year. within a day or less,” said Hanna.
Hanna and Baker said Bloomberg they also believe that Google has become less willing to listen to employees in recent years. They specifically point out that the company’s goal is in the past and the very public protest of the workers.
“We appreciate the contributions of Alex and Dylan – our research on responsible AI is critically important, and we are continuing to expand our work in this area to accommodate AI Principle“, a Google spokesperson told Engadget. We are also committed to building a company where people with different perspectives, backgrounds and experiences can do their best work and show it off to each other. “
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