Who is Timnit Gebru? Google Scholar Fired Over Controversial Email with Jeff Dean

Urian B., Tech Times 03 December 2020, 08:12 pm

Google recently fired a leading researcher and scholar, Timnit Gebru over a controversial email with Jeff Dean. Timnit Gebru, a leading researcher in the whole field of both ethics and artificial intelligence recently tweeted that Google had in fact fired her in response to a certain message she sent towards an internal email list.

Timnit Gebru Google Scholar

According to the story by TechCrunch, Casey Newton recently obtained the email that is in question, and published it to the Platformer, in which Gebru had expressed frustrations regarding her treatment received at Google. She also expressed her disappointment when it came to the company's inclusion and diversity efforts.

It was stated that they had a particular Black research all hands along with such an emotional show of exasperation. Silencing was then said to be the most fundamental way possible. Google had declined to comment on the matter, except to point out to a particular email coming from Jeff Dean, the actual head of Google Research, in which it was stated that Gebru had threatened to resign if certain conditions were not met.

Timnit Gebru Google AI

Gebru then stated that she hadn't resigned and that she had asked for simple conditions first. She stated that she would respond when she is back from vacation. Diversity and ethics in the workplace is currently still a huge problem that not just Google is experiencing.

In fact, YouTube even introduced a brand new feature in order to filter out the toxic comments videos could receive. The feature actually appears when users are attempting to post something deemed offensive in a certain video's comment section. YouTube then warns the user to "keep comments respectful."

Who is Timnit Gebru?

Timnit Gebru can be known as not just a leading researcher but an actual prominent artificial-intelligence computer scientist that was able to help pioneer research deeper into facial recognition software's main bias against people of color, according to an article by the Washington Post. To clarify, she alleged that she had been abruptly fired from Google for actually sending an email that officially criticized the company's own treatment of general minority employees saying that she actually "constantly dehumanized."

Gebru is also known as an alumni coming from the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is now one of the leading voices when it comes to the ethical use of artificial intelligence. Her well-known work came from a landmark study back in 2018 that showed that the artificial intelligence facial recognition software had actually misidentified dark-skinned women up to 35% of the time.

As of the moment, Timnit Gebru's twitter account is filled with support from other users that parade her supposedly "brave" move. As of the moment, it is still unknown as to where Timnit Gebru will end up next and if Google will resolve the issue with her and offer an official explanation regarding their side of why she was fired.