A Google research manager resigned after the controversial resignations of two female leaders in his organization. Samy Bengio, who supervised the ethical AI team prior to a February reorganization, is leaving to look for other opportunities, according to Bloomberg. Your last day will be April 28th.
Bengio was a strong supporter of the stars of AI ethics researchers, Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, who previously co-led the AI ethics team. Gebru was fired in December while working on an article on the dangers of great language models. Mitchell was fired in February after using a script to search his emails for evidence of discrimination against Gebru.
In a Facebook statement after the fire, Bengio said he was “shocked” by what happened to Gebru.
The layoffs generated outrage across the technology industry, prompting several researchers to refuse funding or other opportunities Of google. Two Google engineers also resigned from the company in protest, citing Gebru’s resignation as the main reason for his resignations.
After Gebru left, Google reorganized its research department, placing the AI ethics team under the command of Marian Croak, leader of the engineering department. The move eliminated Bengio’s responsibilities, according to Bloomberg.
In his farewell letter to the team, Bengio said that while he was looking forward to the next challenge, it would be difficult to leave Google Brain. “I learned a lot from all of you, in terms of machine learning research, of course, but also about how difficult, but important, it is to organize a large team of researchers to promote ambitious long-term research, exploration, rigor, diversity and inclusion ”, He wrote. He did not mention Gebru or Mitchell’s layoffs.