Should Google Be Its Own Watchdog?

The departure of a prominent researcher sparks conflict over AI ethics and race within the company

- Dina Bass, Gerrit de Vynck, Shelly Banjo, and Mark Bergen 

Google has gotten itself into another management crisis. On Dec. 2, Timnit Gebru, an artificial intelligence researcher best known for showing how facial recognition algorithms are better at identifying White people than Black people, said she’d been fired. Gebru’s boss described her departure as a resignation, but both sides acknowledged the conflict centered on Google’s discomfort with a research paper Gebru planned to publish about ethical issues related to technology that underpins some of the company’s key products.

To date, more than 2,300 Googlers and 3,700 others have signed a petition supporting Gebru. Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai sent an email on Dec. 9 apologizing to employees for how the company had handled her departure and promising to review the situation, saying it had “seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google.”

Pichai didn’t seem to have only ethics researchers in mind. Gebru, a Black woman, has been an outspoken advocate for other non-White employees. The two issues—the lack of diversity within the tech industry and the way advanced software products can harm underrepresented demographic groups—have become increasingly intertwined. Many of the researchers and employees raising concerns are members of marginalized groups that don’t have much power at the company, according to Gebru. Speaking of Google, she says, “Nobody should trust that they are self-policing their products.” A Google spokesperson declined to comment.