Google illustration.

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Yichuan Cao / Sipa USA / SIPA

More than 1,600 Google employees and more than 2,500 academics and citizens signed an online letter asking Google for an explanation after the dismissal of a black researcher.

It all started in the middle of last week.

This Wednesday, Timnit Gebru said on Twitter that his hierarchy had accepted a resignation that it had not submitted.

A few days earlier, this researcher who works on ethical issues related to artificial intelligence (AI) had complained to an internal group that Google "was silencing marginalized voices".

A strange resignation and a retoked article

Timnit Gebru affirms that Google accuses him of “certain aspects” of this e-mail, which would be “in contradiction with what is expected of a manager at Google”.

According to NPR, the researcher also told this group that she had been ordered to retract a scientific article on the possible use of an AI to imitate hateful or biased remarks.

You know these last 2 weeks were supposed to be my vacations and we're currently on a road trip.

Trying to find my email with my conditions that were so unacceptable to them, but one of them is basically point # 1 here: https://t.co/8Qkcf6F2Yx

- Timnit Gebru (@timnitGebru) December 4, 2020

Google's AI department chief Jeff Dean justified the retraction request in a publicized email explaining that the article had failed to meet the requirement levels for publication.

He said that Timnit Gebru's article "had significant gaps that prevented us from being comfortable with the idea of ​​associating the name of Google."

Militant employees being watched?

In addition to explanations on this article, the signatories of the letter ask for an "unequivocal" commitment from Google to respect scientific integrity and academic freedom.

Activist for more diversity, Timnit Gebru co-founded the group “Black in AI”, which seeks to increase the presence of black people in the field of AI.

An Ethiopian-American, she studied the propensity of facial recognition technologies to misidentify people of color.

His dismissal comes as a federal agency on Wednesday asked Google to respond to accusations of monitoring its employee activists.

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  • Dismissal