Google has announced that they suspended the corporate account of Margaret Mitchel, the former co-lead of Timnit Gerbu of the Big G's ethical AI division, claiming that she had shared thousands of sensitive internal files with people outside the company.
Google investigates another researcher in AI division
A source from Google told Axios that Mitchell had been using automated scripts to find messages showing discriminatory treatment of Gebru, whose recent firing from Google sparked outrage among his colleagues. A spokesperson from Google said that the company was investigating the incident.
The spokesperson said that their security systems automatically lock an employee's corporate account when they detect that the account is at risk of compromise due to credential problems or when an automated rule involving the handling of sensitive data has been triggered.
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The spokesperson added that yesterday, their systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and they shared them with numerous external accounts. This has been explained to the employee, according to TheNextWeb.
On January 19, Gebru posted on Twitter than Mitchell had not been fired yet, but that the researcher would be locked out of her account for a few days. Mitchell has been critical of Google's treatment of Gebru since the researcher's forced exit from the company in December 2020.
Gebru said that Mitchell was fired in retaliation for an email that was sent to colleagues that reportedly criticized the Big G's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion operation.
Jeff Dean, the Google executive, posted on Twitter that Mitchell had resigned over conditions that Google requested before publishing a research paper she co-authored on massive language models.
Mitchell said that her team are now using the term resignated. Thousands of scientists are to sign an open letter expressing solitary with Gebru. Mitchell's departure was also cited in the announcement of the Alphabet Workers Union.
Sundar Pichai, the Google CEO, has sought to ease out the outrage but his efforts have been criticized by the employees, including Mitchell.
Hours before the announcement of Mitchell's suspension, she lambasted the company for consistently alienating Black women. Mitchell's suspension will escalate the growing tensions between the Google management and the employees.
Timnit Gebru's firing
After Timnit Gebru's firing, Google's workplace culture was embroiled in controversy. Gebru is a well-respected pioneer in her field and is one of the very few Black women leaders in the AI industry, according to Vox.
On December 2, 2020, Google fired her after after she blocked the publication of her research around bias in AI systems.
Days before her departure, Gebru sent an internal memo to her colleagues detailing how the higher-ups at Google tried to dismiss her research. Gebru criticized her department for what she described as a lack of diversity among its staff.
The email was published by Platformer and it stated that the company was silencing in the most fundamental way possible and she claimed that your life gets worse when you start advocating for underrepresented people at Google
After her departure, Jeff Dean, the head of AI research at Google, sent a note to Gebru's department on December 3, 2020 stating that Gebru's research paper did not meet the company's standards for publishing after internal review.
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Written by Sieeka Khan
