A researcher turned down a $60k grant from Google because it ousted 2 top AI ethics leaders: 'I don't think this is going to blow over'

In a sign of continued blowback from Google's controversial ousting of two top artificial intelligence leaders, a researcher just publicly turned down a major grant from the company. Late last year, Luke Stark, an assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario researching the social and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence, applied for a Google Research Scholar award. Each year, the company offers grants to early-career professors pursuing topics relevant to Google's fields of interest. Stark applied with plans to put any funding towards his further research into how technology such as mood-tracking apps and facial recognition are used to monitor human emotions. "My impression was that Google was really pulling together a top ethical AI team," he told Insider.