A handful of companies dominates not only how artificial intelligence is developed but critiqued. It's time for that to change. Timnit Gebru--a giant in the world of AI and then co-leader of Google's AI ethics team-- was pushed out of her job in December. Gebru had been fighting Google over a research paper – that she had co-authored, which explored the risks of the AI models the search giant uses to power its core products, including almost every English query on Google. The paper highlighted the potential biases (racial, gender, and others)) of these language models, as well as the outsize carbon emissions required to compute them.Google wanted the paper retracted; Gebru refused.

Google says it will examine the departure of a prominent Black female researcher in the field of ethics in artificial intelligence, whose recent, sudden exit has angered thousands of the company's employees and others in the tech and academic communities. In a memo sent Wednesday to Google (GOOG) employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company needs to "assess the circumstances" that led up to Timnit Gebru leaving Google last week, and examine "where we could have improved and led a more respectful process." "We will begin a review of what happened to identify all the points where we can learn -- considering everything from de-escalation strategies to new processes we can put in place," he wrote in a memo that was first posted online by news website Axios and has been confirmed as authentic by CNN Business. A Google spokeswoman said the company had no comment. Gebru is known for her research into bias and inequality in AI, and in particular for a 2018 paper she coauthored with Joy Buolamwini that highlighted how poorly commercial facial-recognition software fared when attempting to classify women and people of color.

On Thursday morning, after an outpouring of support for Gebru on social media, Dean sent an internal email to Google's AI group with his account of the situation. He said that Gebru's paper "didn't meet our bar for publication" because "it ignored too much relevant research." He also said that Gebru's conditions included "revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback." "Given Timnit's role as a respected researcher and a manager in our Ethical AI team, I feel badly that Timnit has gotten to a place where she feels this way about the work we're doing," he wrote. "I know we all genuinely share Timnit's passion to make AI more equitable and inclusive."