Google made AI language the centerpiece of I/O while ignoring its troubled past at the company

Yesterday at Google's I/O developer conference, the company outlined ambitious plans for its future built on a foundation of advanced language AI. These systems, said Google CEO Sundar Pichai, will let users find information and organize their lives by having natural conversations with computers. All you need to do is speak, and the machine will answer. But for many in the AI community, there was a notable absence in this conversation: Google's response to its own research examining the dangers of such systems. In December 2020 and February 2021, Google first fired Timnit Gebru and then Margaret Mitchell, co-leads of its Ethical AI team. The story of their departure is complex but was triggered by a paper the pair co-authored (with researchers outside Google) examining risks associated with the language models Google now presents as key to its future.