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Timnit Gebru: Why She was Terminated at Google.

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Timnit Gebru

Timnit Gebru was an AI Ethics researcher at Google. She graduated from Stanford University with a bachelors in Electrical Engineering. She is also the co-founder of Black in AI.

Gebru co-led a department at Google that studies the social and ethical ramifications of artificial intelligence. She and her team earlier published a research paper which caught the attention of Megan Kacholia. Kacholia is Google AI’s Vice President. The paper analyzed the downsides of the popular large language models, including GPT-3.

The paper initially sailed through the company’s internal review process and had been submitted to a prominent conference. This is before Kacholia ordered Gebru to retract her latest research paper. Or else remove her name from its list of authors, along with those of several other members of her team.

Part of the faults she found in the paper was relayed to Gebru through her manager, Samy Bengio. Bengio recited a document from Kacholia which claimed that all of Google’s uses of large language models were “engineered to avoid” the pitfalls that the paper described.

Gebru was allegedly forced to resign in December 2020. The issue has gained widespread attention. Close to 2700 Google employees and more than 4300 academics and civil society supporters signed a letter condemning Gebru’s alleged firing. Nine members of Congress sent a letter to Google asking it to clarify the circumstances around the exit of Timnit Gebru.

Gebru announced that she will “launch an independent research institute modeled on her work on Google’s Ethical AI team and her experience in Black in AI”. She started fundraising for the initiative in June, 2021.

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