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Google has fired one of its top artificial intelligence
researchers, Margaret Mitchell, escalating internal turmoil at
the company following the departure of Timnit Gebru, another
leading figure on Google’s AI ethics team.

Mitchell, who announced her firing on Twitter, did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to Reuters, Google said the firing followed a
weeks-long investigation that found she moved electronic files
outside the company. Google said Mitchell violated the company’s
code of conduct and security policies.

Google’s ethics in artificial intelligence research unit has
been under scrutiny since December’s dismissal of Gebru, a
prominent Black researcher in Silicon Valley. Gebru’s exit
prompted thousands of Google workers to protest. Mitchell and
Gebru co-led the ethics in artificial intelligence team for
about two years.

Gebru and Mitchell, who is white, had called for more diversity
among Google’s research staff and expressed concern that the
company was starting to censor research critical of its products.

Gebru said Google fired her after she questioned an order not to
publish a paper claiming AI that mimics language could hurt
marginalized populations.

Google’s AI research director, Zoubin Ghahramani, and a company
legal representative informed Mitchell’s team of her firing on
Friday in a meeting called at short notice, a person familiar
with the matter told Reuters. The person said little explanation
was given for the dismissal. Alex Hanna, an employee at Google,
said on Twitter the company was running a “smear campaign”
against Mitchell and Gebru, with whom she worked closely.

Google did not immediately comment on those claims. In a
statement to the Guardian, the company said: “After conducting a
review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were
multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our
security policies, which included the exfiltration of
confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of
other employees.”

Google has recruited top scientists with promises of research
freedom, but the limits are tested as researchers increasingly
write about the negative effects of technology and offer
unflattering perspectives on their employer’s products.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/19/google-fires- margaret-mitchell-ai-ethics-team

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