For the second time around in a timeline of only three months, another prominent researcher on ethics within the Artificial Intelligence field noted that Google had fired her. On Friday, the Google researcher Margaret Mitchell noted that she had actually been fired from the said company's AI Lab known as Google Brain, where she had previously co-led another group working directly on ethical approaches towards artificial intelligence.
Margaret Mitchell co-led with Timnit Gebru
According to an article by Wired, her then former group co-leader, Timnit Gebru, had previously departed from Google back in December. Gebru then noted that she had been fired after refusing to remove her said name from a particular research paper that had actually urged caution with the AI systems that had processed text which would include technology utilized in Google's search engine.
Gebru had noted that she actually believes that the disagreement might have been then used as pretext in order to remove her due to her willingness to speak out regarding Google's poor treatment of both Black employees as well as women. Mitchell then learned that she had actually been let go through an email which she received on Friday afternoon. Inside Google, her previous team was then informed by a certain manager that she won't be returning from a suspension that actually happened last month.
Margaret Mitchell allegations
The wider world reportedly found out when Mitchell had posted two words on Twitter blandly saying "I'm fired." In a particular statement, a particular Google spokesperson noted that Mitchell had allegedly shared some confidential business-sensitive documents as well as private data of some other employees outside of the company.
After the previous suspension of Mitchell last month, Google then noted that activity in her account that had actually triggered a particular security system. A source that was familiar with Mitchell's recent suspension then noted that she had been using a particular script in order to search her emails for particular material that was related to Gebru's time within the company.
I'm fired.
— MMitchell (@mmitchell_ai) February 19, 2021
Read Also: Who is Timnit Gebru? Google Scholar Fired Over Controversial Email with Jeff Dean
Margaret Mitchell contributions
Gebru, Mitchell, and their whole ethics AI team over at Google were reportedly prominent contributors to the very recent growth in research by certain AI experts that were looking to understand as well as mitigate the potential downsides that AI has. They then reportedly contributed to decisions by google executives in order to limit some of the said company's AI offerings like retiring a particular feature of an image recognition service that actually attempted to identify the said gender of the people within photos.
Google AI research boss known as Jeff Dean previously noted that the research paper that had led to Gebru's departure was actually of poor quality. However, he did not mention some work regarding ways to fix the flaws in AI text systems. Researchers both inside and outside of Google have reportedly disputed that particular characterization. Over 2,600 Google employees reportedly signed a letter that had protested Gebru's treatment.
Related Article: Google AI Researchers Want Timnit Gebru to Come Back at Higher Position Among Other Demands
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
