https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/epdpwn/googles-firing-of-an-ethics-researcher-shows-the-limits-of-having-a-seat-at-the-table

On Monday, a team of Google employees published a letter explaining the events leading up to Google’s firing of Dr. Timnit Gebru, a prominent AI ethics researcher whose work has helped to reveal racial bias in facial recognition algorithms.

Gebru co-authored an academic paper on the ethical considerations of machine learning models with researchers from the University of Washington, which was submitted to a conference after being approved internally. According to Gebru, Google then objected to the paper and asked her to remove her name from it or retract it. In response, Gebru detailed conditions she wanted Google to meet in order for her to stay at the company, including transparency about the paper’s internal review, in exchange for removing her name. If the company declined, then the parties would negotiate a date for her to leave. She was fired shortly after, after sending an email about the situation to an internal listserv.