Thread by @GoogleWalkout

We stand with @timnitGebru. We call on Google Research to strengthen its commitment to research integrity and to unequivocally commit to supporting research that honors the commitments made in Google’s AI Principles. Sign the letter: bit.ly/standwithtimnit

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with Dr. Timnit Gebru, who was terminated from her position as Staff Research Scientist & Co-Lead of Ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) team at Google, following unprecedented research censorship.2/19 #IStandWithTimnit #BelieveBlackWomen

We call on Google Research to strengthen its commitment to research integrity and to unequivocally commit to supporting research that honors the commitments made in Google’s AI Principles.
3/19 #IStandWithTimnit #BelieveBlackWomen

Until December 2, 2020, Dr. Gebru was one of very few Black women Research Scientists at the company, which boasts a dismal 1.6% Black employees overall. Her research accomplishments are extensive, and have profoundly impacted academic scholarship and public policy.
4/19

Dr. Gebru is a pathbreaking scientist doing some of the most important work to ensure just and accountable AI and to create a welcoming and diverse AI research field.
Instead of being embraced by Google as an exceptionally talented and prolific contributor,
5/19

Dr. Gebru has faced defensiveness, racism, gaslighting, research censorship, and now a retaliatory firing. In an email to Dr. Gebru’s team on the evening of December 2, 2020, Google executives claimed that she had chosen to resign. This is false.
6/19

In their direct correspondence with Dr. Gebru, these executives informed her that her termination was immediate, and pointed to an email she sent to a Google Brain diversity and inclusion mailing list as pretext.
7/19 #IStandWithTimnit #BelieveBlackWomen

The contents of this email are important. In it, Dr. Gebru pushed back against Google’s censorship of her (and her colleagues’) research, which focused on examining the environmental and ethical implications of large-scale AI language models (LLMs),
8/19

which are used in many Google products. Dr. Gebru & her colleagues worked for months on a paper that was under review at an academic conference. In late Nov., nearly two months after the piece was internally reviewed & approved for publication through standard processes,
9/19

Google leadership made the decision to censor it, without warning or cause. Dr. Gebru asked them to explain this decision and to take accountability for it, and for their lackluster stand on discriminatory and harassing workplace conditions.
10/19

This termination is an act of retaliation against Dr. Gebru, and it heralds danger for people working for ethical and just AI — especially Black people and People of Color — across Google.
11/19 #IStandWithTimnit #BelieveBlackWomen

Research integrity can no longer be taken for granted in Google’s corporate research environment, and Dr. Gebru’s firing has overthrown a working understanding of what kind of research Google will permit. This is also a moment of reckoning beyond Google.
12/19

As we know, Dr. Gebru is one of the few people exerting pressure from the inside against the unethical and undemocratic incursion of powerful and biased technologies into our daily lives. This is a public service, and its importance cannot be overstated.
13/19

Google’s retaliation against Dr. Gebru, and its move to silence this work, concerns us all.

We have the following demands of Google Research leadership:
14/19 #IStandWithTimnit #BelieveBlackWomen

1. We demand Jeff Dean (Google Senior Fellow & Senior VP of Research), Megan Kacholia (VP of Eng for Google Brain), & those involved w/ decision to censor Dr. Gebru’s paper meet w/ the Ethical AI team to explain the process by which the paper was rejected by leadership.
15/19

2. We demand transparency to the broader public, including Google users & our colleagues in the academic community, about Google leadership’s decision to order Dr. Gebru & her colleagues to withdraw their research on large-scale language models.
16/19

...This has become a matter of public concern, and there needs to be public accountability to ensure any trust in Google Research going forward.

3. We demand that Google Research make an unequivocal commitment to research integrity and academic freedom,
17/19

...drastically strengthening the commitments made in Google’s Research Philosophy, and commit to supporting research that furthers the goals of Google’s AI Principles by providing clear guidelines on how research will be reviewed & how research integrity will be respected.
18/19

Add your name to the list of academic, civil society, & industry supporters:
Email [e-mail] from your institutional email address (preferred) w/ subject line “support”
Include your name & affiliation, as you’d like to appear on the list of signatories.
19/19