Last December and February, Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell were fired by Google while working in the AI ethics arm for the brand. On April 7, 2021, Samy Bengio, leader and co-founder of Google Brain submitted his resignation.

Let’s take a look back at these two firings. Timnit Gerbu, a leading AI researcher and advocate of inclusivity in the tech world in general, was fired in a controversial move: Google did not want her to work on a study showing the biases and dangers of NLP models. Aged 37, she had notably become known for the elaboration in 2018 of a paper highlighting the racist and sexist biases of AI, while working as a researcher at Stanford University. It is in this context that she joined Google, with the aim of bringing more ethics in AI at the American giant, she who has never hidden her concern about the deviances of AI, especially in relation to facial recognition. Many Google employees and researchers had given their support to the researcher.

Margaret Mitchell, co-director of ethical AI for the Californian firm was also fired two months later, but this time for violating the code of conduct within the company. It should be noted that Margaret Mitchell had, and this on several occasions, expressed her dissatisfaction with the dismissal of Timnit Gerbu. Margaret Mitchell was however the founder of this research team in AI ethics for Google.

This week, Samy Bengio, head and co-founder of Google Brain, Google’s artificial intelligence division, resigned. A decision that follows the controversial dismissals of Timnit Gerbu and Margaret Mitchell. Since 2007, Samy Bengio worked at Google and had gradually climbed the ranks to be one of the pillars of AI at Google.

Translated from Éthique : Licenciement de deux chercheuses chez Google, le dirigeant et cofondateur de Google Brain démissionne