Google scientist’s abrupt exit exposes rift in prominent AI unit

In the past two years, several internal critics of Google’s approach to AI and ethics have left the company. — Reuters

Google’s decision to part ways with a prominent researcher laid bare divisions within the company’s artificial intelligence unit and subjected its leader, the lauded software engineer Jeff Dean, to widespread scorn.

Timnit Gebru, a renowned scientist and one of the few Black women in AI, said on Dec 2 that she was fired over an email she authored expressing dismay with management and the way it handled a review of her research. Gebru had been co-head of the team examining the ethical ramifications of AI.