A Second AI Researcher Says She Was Fired by Google

For the second time in three months, a prominent woman researcher on ethics in artificial intelligence says Google fired her. On Friday, researcher Margaret Mitchell said she had been fired from the company's AI lab, Google Brain, where she previously co-led a group working on ethical approaches to artificial intelligence. Her former co-leader of that group, Timnit Gebru, departed Google in December. Gebru said she had been fired after refusing to retract or remove her name from a research paper that urged caution with AI systems that process text, including technology Google uses in its search engine. Gebru has said she believes that disagreement may have been used as a pretext for removing her because of her willingness to speak out about Google's poor treatment of Black employees and women.