Tag Archives: Gebrus

Two members of Google’s Ethical AI group have announced their departures from the company, according to a report from Bloomberg. Senior researcher Alex Hanna, and software engineer Dylan Baker, will join Timnit Gebru’s nonprofit research institute, Distributed AI Research (DAIR). In a post announcing her resignation on Medium, Hanna criticizes the “toxic” work environment at Google, and draws attention to a lack of representation of Black women at the company. “Prior to… Source link

Google’s AI leadership came under fire in December when star ethics researcher Timnit Gebru was abruptly fired while working on a paper about the dangers of large language models. Now, new reporting from Bloomberg suggests the turmoil began long before her termination — and includes allegations of bias and sexual harassment. Shortly after Gebru arrived at Google in 2018, she informed her boss that a colleague had been accused of sexual harassment at another organization. Katherine… Source link

Google is changing its policies related to research and diversity after completing an internal investigation into the firing of ethical AI team co-leader Timnit Gebru, according to Axios. The company intends to tie the pay of certain executives to diversity and inclusivity goals. It’s also making changes to how sensitive employee exits are managed. Although Google did not reveal the results of the investigation, the changes seem to be direct responses to how the situation with Gebru… Source link

Google is reorganizing its responsible AI teams in the wake of Timnit Gebru’s firing. The ethical AI team will now roll up to Marian Croak, a prominent Black executive in the engineering department. Croak will also oversee employees focused on engineering fairness products, according to Bloomberg. She will report to Jeff Dean, who leads the company’s AI efforts. The ethical AI team was not aware of the reorganization until news broke Wednesday night. In a blog post confirming… Source link

In a letter posted to LinkedIn dated January 5, David W. Baker, a Google director of engineering who worked on trust and safety, wrote that he was leaving the company as of January 19 after more than 16 years. Gebru’s departure, Baker wrote, “extinguished my desire to continue as a Googler.” Similarly, Vinesh Kannan, a software engineer, posted on Twitter Wednesday that he left Google this month “because of Google’s mistreatment” of Gebru and April Curley, a Black ex-Google diversity… Source link

Two Google engineers have resigned from the tech giant, citing the departure late last year of prominent Black artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru. The resignations are the latest salvos in an ongoing fight between the company and workers who are furious about its lack of diversity. In a letter posted to LinkedIn dated January 5, David W. Baker, a Google director of engineering who worked on trust and safety, wrote that he was leaving the company as of January 19… Source link

In light of artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru’s exit from Google last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to staffers, obtained by Axios, saying the company would investigate “the circumstances that led up to Dr. Gebru’s departure, examining where we could have improved and led a more respectful process.” Last week, Gebru said she was fired from the company after sending an email to her direct reports discussing how she was disappointed in her… Source link

Google employees who worked with Timnit Gebru are coming out publicly to dispute claims against the star AI ethics researcher. On Monday, the team published a letter on the Google Walkout Medium account firmly stating that Gebru was fired and did not resign as Google’s head of artificial intelligence, Jeff Dean, said. They also said the publication review policy that Gebru was supposed to follow was applied “unevenly and discriminatorily.” “Dr. Gebru’s dismissal has been framed… Source link

A paper co-authored by former Google AI ethicist Timnit Gebru raised some potentially thorny questions for Google about whether AI language models may be too big, and whether tech companies are doing enough to reduce potential risks, according to MIT Technology Review. The paper also questioned the environmental costs and inherent biases in large language models. Google’s AI team created such a language model— BERT— in 2018, and it was so successful that the company incorporated… Source link