In December 2020, Google informed Dr. Timnit Gebru that she was terminated from her position as Staff Research Scientist and Co-Lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team. Google then falsely claimed that Dr. Gebru had resigned, citing Dr. Gebru’s pushback against company censorship of her research paper on the dangers of large-scale AI language models. The firing was unjust and indicative of structural racism against Black women at Google and in the tech industry. Since December, Google has proceeded to fire Dr. Margaret Mitchell, the other Co-Lead of the Ethical AI Team, and announce reorganization of its AI Ethics Team. In addition to raising red flags about Google's research, the company response to criticism over firing Dr. Gebru has displayed a complete disregard for its workers and an alarming lack of accountability.

As a first step in solidarity with Dr. Gebru and all those working towards equity beyond tokenism in the tech industry, we pledge not to be recruited by or work for Google until we see that the demands of Google Walkout for Real Change are truly met. We will not be recruited by a company that harbors a workplace environment of racism and censorship in the name of "ethics." 

As students & future tech workers, we echo 2695 Googlers and 4302 academic, industry, and civil society supporters in calling for the following changes:

1. “We demand that Jeff Dean (Google Senior Fellow and Senior Vice-President of Research), Megan Kacholia (Vice-President of Engineering for the Google Brain organization), and those who were involved with the decision to censor Dr. Gebru’s paper meet with the Ethical AI team to explain the process by which the paper was unilaterally rejected by leadership.
2. We demand transparency to the broader public, including Google users and our colleagues in the academic community, about Google leadership’s decision to order Dr. Gebru and her colleagues to withdraw their research on large-scale language models. 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, 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 and how research integrity will be respected.”

#RecruitMeNot #ISupportTimnit #BelieveBlackWomen

Google Walkout for Real Change