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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

TBD | Was This Google Ethicist Fired for Doing Her Job?

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

Daily News, News, News Commentary

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2020

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Recently, one of the world’s leading AI ethics researchers, Timnit Gebru, left Google. Google says she resigned. Timnit says she was fired. In the days since, Timnit’s departure has turned into a public relations crisis for the search giant, prompting its CEO to issue a public apology.  What happened behind the scenes at Google that led to Timnit’s dismissal?  Guest: Timnit Gebru, AI ethics researcher, and the co-founder of Black in AI.  Host Lizzie O’Leary   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:04.0

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0:26.0

Visit Concert.co.uk to learn more.

0:30.0

Hey, what next listener? It's Mary.

0:33.0

Just wanted to give you a quick heads up that today's show is going to sound a little bit different.

0:38.0

That's because our friends over at what next TBD, they had a great interview

0:41.0

that just couldn't wait until Friday.

0:44.0

So, we're going to switch things up a bit.

0:46.0

For the rest of the show, you're going to be hearing from Lizio Leary.

0:49.0

I'll be back tomorrow.

0:56.0

Earlier this fall, Timnitte Gebru submitted a paper for consideration for an academic conference,

1:02.0

not something that's particularly unusual for her.

1:05.0

Timnitte studies ethics and artificial intelligence.

1:08.0

So, this is the kind of thing she does.

1:11.0

But since she was working at Google, there were some standard pre-submission hoops to jump through.

1:16.0

Google wanted to review the paper, which Timnitte wrote with several of her colleagues and sign off on it.

1:22.0

And that's when Timnitte says she started getting pushback.

1:27.0

So, this was the week before Thanksgiving at 4.30pm randomly.

...

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