Google has fired the co-head of the ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) team Margaret Mitchell for violating the security policies stated by the company.
The previous AI ethics researcher Timmit Gebru, a widely respected leader in AI ethics research, was also fired over similar accusations.
Mitchell is known for co-authoring a groundbreaking paper that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of colour. The system can end up discriminating against them.
Mitchell also used automated scripts to look through her email to find evidence of discrimination against her co-workers.
Her views were directed at Google AI’s head Jeff Dean and CEO of Google Sundar Pichai; resulting in losing her corporate email access. Her activities were investigated, which led to the termination of Mitchell as well.
According to Axios, Google said in a statement regarding Mitchell’s firing: “After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.”
These recent terminations have stirred a lot of heat for Google regarding diversity. As of now, Marian Croak, a Vice President in the engineering organisation is leading a new centre of expertise on responsible AI within Google.
