What Really Happened When Google Ousted Timnit Gebru
wired.com
wired.com
No matter how right she was, posting an ultimatum was a tactical error. Also it seems the Google she encountered has a bad culture of sexism and racism.
Timnit Gebru had a bullshit job. Indeed, her whole field, AI ethics, is a bullshit field.
Now, I’m not saying that AI ethics is unimportant. Indeed, it’s perhaps the single most important topic of consideration of our time.
The reason it’s a bullshit field, and Gebru had a bullshit job, is that ethics can’t be delegated. A firm is, at most, as ethical as it’s CEO and board of directors.
When Google hired Gebru, what they thought they were buying was a cosign of their policies by a “woman of color”. They had no interest in her critique, and they thought she was smart enough to understand that she wasn’t expected to think for herself.
I disagree that AI Ethics is a bullshit field-- but its one that belongs, has to belong, on the outside looking in. Its an academic field and a watchdog field. Its a subset of Ethics, not of AI. If Google were really concerned about AI ethics they would have set up an external entity with a consortium of other industry partners, seeded them with an endowment large enough to have some measure of intellectual freedom, put them under the auspices of an external parent organization with a long and positive reputation and severed all ties with them. They wanted the optics of ethics, the new car smell-- but they didnt wan't to breech the membrane of plausible deniability when someone internal pointed out that their golden geese were causing some problems.