Google and its ethics AI team row: What we know so far
Google has drawn major criticism on the move of sudden investigation of Mitchell and suspension of her system access.
Google has recently locked out artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Margaret Mitchell. This is not the first controversy between the company and its ethics team to have surfaced.
What has happened so far:
1. Margaret Mitchell is the second AI researcher in the ethics team of Google to have been plugged out of corporate access. The company has said she will be 'locked out for a few days'.
2. Margaret Mitchell is the co-lead of Google ethical AI team, responsible for developing the company's technology in a socially responsible manner.
3. Google had earlier sacked notable AI ethicist and outspoken critic Timnit Gebru. Mitchell has been a vocal supporter of Gebru on social media and had questioned Google on firing her.
4. Gebru claimed to have been abruptly fired by the tech giant after the company demanded retraction of her research paper that questioned the facial recognition technology used by Google. Gebru co-authored a paper with Joy Buolamwini, as per which there were more errors in identification of black people in comparison to white people, because of largely white data sets used in the algorithm, reported The Verge.
5. Google has drawn major criticism on the move of sudden investigation of Mitchell and suspension of her system access.
{{/usCountry}}5. Google has drawn major criticism on the move of sudden investigation of Mitchell and suspension of her system access.
{{/usCountry}}6. Gebru on the latest development had said, "What happens to Mitchell will continue to shape attitudes toward corporate self-governance and speculation about the voracity of research produced with Big Tech funding. "
{{/usCountry}}6. Gebru on the latest development had said, "What happens to Mitchell will continue to shape attitudes toward corporate self-governance and speculation about the voracity of research produced with Big Tech funding. "
{{/usCountry}}7. The Alphabet Workers' Union (AWU) had said, "The Alphabet Workers Union is concerned by the suspension of the corporate access of Margaret Mitchell, AWU member and lead of the Ethical AI team. This suspension comes on the heels of Google’s firing of former co-lead Timnit Gebru; together these are an attack on the people who are trying to make Google’s technology more ethical." AWU further questioning the company added, "Regardless of the outcome of the company’s investigation, the ongoing targeting of leaders in this organization calls into question Google’s commitment to ethics—in AI and in their business practices."
8. Google has been facing a number of controversies pertaining to its AI tech and military deals as well as on diversity and inclusivity fronts.
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9. Another employee, April Curley, a diversity recruiter at Google in December had alleged that the company is not interested in diversifying its workplace and does not want to hire black talent, as reported by Reuters.
10. Mitchell had also tweeted condemning the company CEO Sundar Pichai and the tokenism approach of talking to historically Black universities and colleges after allegations of racism in the company surfaced.
A Google spokesperson was quoted by Reuters as saying, "Our 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. In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts. We explained this to the employee earlier today.”
(With agency inputs)
