Google workers reject company's account of AI researcher's exit as anger grows

Outcry is growing within Google over the treatment of the AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru, with Gebru's colleagues challenging the company's account of her exit in an open letter. In a letter posted on Monday on Medium, Gebru's colleagues disputed an executive's claim that she had resigned and called internal research policies into question. "Dr Gebru did not resign, despite what Jeff Dean (Senior Vice President and head of Google Research), has publicly stated," the letter reads before going into detail about the events that led to Gebru's dismissal. Gebru, a Black female scientist who is highly respected in her field, said on Twitter last week that she had been fired after sending an email to an internal company group for women and allies, expressing frustration over discrimination at Google and a dispute over one of her papers that was retracted after initially being approved for publication. The paper in question examined the ethical issues associated with AI language technology and reportedly mentions Google's own software, which is important to the company's business model development.