The newly formed Alphabet Workers Union, a Google employee, said he was concerned about Google’s decision to block senior AI ethics researcher Margaret Mitchell from his account.
Google blocked it after discovering it was downloading material related to Timnit Gebru, another AI ethics researcher who was forced to leave the company last month.
The news was first reported on Wednesday by Axios, who said that Google was investigating Mitchell’s recent actions. Mitchell would be using automated scripts to examine his messages and find examples of Gebru’s discriminatory treatment.
“The Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) is concerned about suspending corporate access for Margaret Mitchell, an AWU member and leader of the Ethical AI team,” the union said in a statement. “This suspension comes in the wake of the dismissal of former co-leader Timnit Gebru by Google; together, this is an attack on people who are trying to make Google’s technology more ethical.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC, but a spokesman told Axios: “Our security systems automatically block an employee’s corporate account when they detect that the account is at risk of compromise due to credential issues. or when an automated rule involving the handling of confidential data has been triggered. “
The spokesman added: “In this case, yesterday our systems detected that an account exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with several external accounts. We explained this to the employee earlier today.”
Gebru’s departure
Gebru, who was a technical co-leader of the Google AI team, tweeted on December 3rd that Google fired her because of a disagreement over a research paper that examined bias in artificial intelligence. The researcher, who had spoken openly about the company’s treatment of black employees, said the treatment was indicative of a broader standard at Google. This led to a wave of support from across the industry, including a petition signed by thousands of Google employees and industry colleagues.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to employees, apologizing for the mistrust sown in the company and industry amid Gebru’s departure, while promising that the company would launch a “review” of what went wrong.
About a week later, Google’s ethical AI team sent Google executives a list of demands to “rebuild trust” after Gebru left the company.
The team, which claims to advise on research, product and policy, wrote a six-page letter to Pichai, AI chief Jeff Dean, and vice president of engineering Megan Kacholia. The letter, entitled “The Future of Ethical AI in Google Research” and viewed by CNBC, lists demands from executives, including removing Kacholia from the group’s reporting structure, refraining from retaliation and reinstating Gebru at a higher level.
Who is Margaret Mitchell?
Mitchell founded the Google Ethical AI team and is one of the co-leaders. AWU has described her as a “critical member” of the academic and industrial communities around the ethical production of AI. She has been on Google for just over four years and lives in Seattle, according to LinkedIn.
“Regardless of the outcome of the company’s investigation, the continued direction of leaders in this organization questions Google’s commitment to ethics – in AI and its business practices,” said AWU. “Many members of the AI ethics team are members of AWU and our union membership recognizes the crucial work they do and sympathizes with them at this time.”
Referring to Google’s statement to Axios, AWU said it marked a “remarkable departure from Google’s typical practice of refusing to comment on personnel matters”.
AWU announced its launch on January 4. Executive President Parul Koul and Vice President Chewy Shaw co-authored a The New York Times article entitled: “We built Google. This is not the company we want to work for.”
He made his first stand on Jan. 7, urging YouTube executives to take tougher action against former President Donald Trump.
The union criticized YouTube, owned by Google, for not banning Trump’s account from the platform after the pro-Trump disturbances in Washington, DC, which resulted in several deaths and dozens of injuries. The group called the company’s decision to reactively remove its videos “lackluster” and said the company should ban its account.
– Additional reporting by Jennifer Elias from CNBC.