Yo!

Technology.

What is it all about?

Even for my firing, this paper was just a pretext, in my opinion.

It wasn't really the reason they fired me.

I think at this point, after reading the paper and stuff, a lot of people have come to that conclusion.

The root of it is like racism and sexism. Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.

I'm your host, Danny Forts, and thank you for tuning in as ever.

We have a great show for you today, and we're going to get right into it because we have a fabulous guest on the show.

Tim Neat Gebrou is with us, and if you've been following the tech news these last few months, you probably know who she is.

Tim Neat is one of the very few black women in the upper echelons of computer science and AI worlds.

And until December was one of the co-heads of Google's ethical AI research team.

And some of you may know the story. If you don't, as she was preparing

to publish a paper on some of the pitfalls and dangers of large language models, which is a

technology very important to Google's core business, she says she was fired. Google claimed

she resigned. Either way, it was a bitter, very abrupt parting.

And after that, her co-director, Meg Mitchell, was fired last month over claims that she removed

some confidential files from company property. Dr. Mitchell was also a vociferous defender of Gebrou and also a critic of Google and its actions.

The point is, the leaders of Google's ethical AI team both departed in very bitter circumstances.

Jeff Dean, the executive overseeing this division, has since apologized for how it was handled.

Google announced a reorganization of the unit, a racial equality review, and new policies

that time manager and executive pay to diversity and inclusion goals.

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