Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a letter to employees about the departure of AI researcher Timnit Gebru.
James Martin/CNET
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday apologized for the tech giant’s handling of the departure of Timnit Gebru, a star artificial intelligence researcher who left the company last week.
In an email to employees, published by Axios, Pichai said Google would investigate Gebru’s exit and consider new processes for the company to institute. A Google representative confirmed the authenticity of the email but declined to comment further.
“I’ve heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru’s departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google,” Pichai wrote. “I want to say how sorry I am for that, and I accept the responsibility of working to restore your trust.”
Gebru said last week that she departed Google after a dispute over a research paper she co-wrote that was critical of the company’s AI systems. In a series of tweets, Gebru said she was fired by Google, though the company claims she resigned. Gebru denied the claim, and said that despite not providing a resignation, a vice president of engineering at Google emailed Gebru’s direct reports to say she was resigning.
In his email, Pichai said Google needed to “accept responsibility” that Gebru, one of the few prominent Black women in AI, left the company “unhappily.” Pichai, however, stopped short of apologizing to Gebru, nor did he mention the possibility of reinstating her.
Gebru didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the researcher seemed to refer to the email on Twitter, telling Google, “Take responsibility for your toxic leaders, HR, Legal and other entities who harass and discriminate against people like me and protect toxicity.”
The incident involving Gebru has intensified already fraught relations between Google management and some in its rank-and-file workforce. On the same day that Gebru tweeted about her departure, Google was accused by the US National Labor Relations Board of retaliating against workers who organized protests against the search giant. In a complaint, the agency said Google broke US labor laws by surveilling, interrogating and firing activist employees.
