Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-12-21)

22

T E C H N O L O G Y

14

Edited by

Joshua Brustein

The departure of a prominentresearchersparks

conflict over AI ethics andracewithinthecompany

Should Google Be

Its Own Watchdog?

Google has gotten itself into another management

crisis. On Dec. 2, Timnit Gebru, an artificial intel­

ligence researcher best known for showing how

facial recognition algorithms are better at identify­

ing White people than Black people, said she’d been

fired. Gebru’s boss described her departure as a res­

ignation, but both sides acknowledged the conflict

centered on Google’sdiscomfortwitha research

paper Gebru planned

to publish about eth­

ical issues related to

technology that under­

pins some of the com­

pany’s key products.

To date, more than

2,300  Googlers and

3,700  others have

signed a petition sup­

porting Gebru. Google

Chief Executive Officer

Sundar Pichai sent an

email on Dec. 9 apol­

ogizing to employees

for how the com­

pany had handled her

departure and prom­

ising to review the sit­

uation, saying it had

“seeded doubts and

led some in our com­

munity to question

their place at Google.”

Pichai didn’t seem

to have only ethics

researchersinmind.Gebru,a Blackwoman,has

beenanoutspokenadvocateforothernon­White

employees. The two issues—the lack of diversity

within the tech industry and the way advanced

software products can harm underrepresented

demographic groups—have become increas­

ingly intertwined. Many of the researchers and

BloombergBusinessweek December 21, 2020

employees raising concerns are members of mar­

ginalized groups that don’t have much power at

thecompany,accordingtoGebru.Speakingof

Google,shesays,“Nobodyshouldtrustthatthey

areself­policing their products.” A Google spokes­

person declined to comment.

As corporations such as Google push forward

withartificialintelligence, there’s an increas­

ing agreement that

a line of ethical

research is needed

to weigh the advan­

tages of the technol­

ogy against potential

harms. There’s been a

steady stream of inci­

dents in which algo­

rithms do things like

automatically insert

male pronouns when

talking about doctors

and female pronouns

when talking about

teachers, or show

photos only of Black

people in response

to web searches for

“unprofessional hair.”

Although academic

institutions have pro­

duced some of this

research, it’s also

coming from within

research departments

atthecompaniescreatingthe products. Google

has more than 200 people working primarily on

research into ethical questions, spread among

various teams; Microsoft Corp. and Facebook

Inc. have similar operations. Google’s attempt

to keep Gebru from publishing a paper that

could have reflected poorly on its commercial

● Gebru