Google offered a teacher $ 60,000, but turned it down. Here’s why

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He was eligible for the award, he said, “for my sense at the time that Google was building a very strong, potentially industry-leading ethical AI team.”

Shortly afterwards, that feeling began to dissipate. In early December, Timnit Gebru, co-leader of Google’s ethical team and a prominent black woman in a mostly white male camp, abruptly left Google. On Wednesday, December 2, she he tweeted who had been “fired immediately” by an email she sent to an internal mailing list. In the email, he expressed dismay at the lack of diversity in the company and frustration at an internal process related to the revision of an unpublished research paper on the risks of building increasingly complex AI language models. big; is becoming increasingly important to Google’s huge search business.

At the time, Gebru said Google AI leadership told him to withdraw the document from consideration for presentation at a conference or to withdraw its name. Google said it accepted Gebru’s resignation because of a list of lawsuits it had sent by e-mail that needed to be attended to in order to continue working for the company.

Gebru’s dismissal started a months-long crisis for the company, including employee departures, a leadership fight and an apology from Google CEO for how the circumstances of Gebru’s departure caused some employees to question his position. there. Google conducted an internal investigation into the matter, the results of which were announced the same day the company fired Gebru co-team leader Margaret Mitchell, who had been constantly critical of the company. on Twitter after Gebru left. (Google cited “multiple violations” of its code of conduct.) Meanwhile, researchers outside of Google, especially in AI, have become increasingly wary of the company’s historically well-regarded fellowship and are angry about the treatment it they have of Gebru and Mitchell.

All of this focused on Stark on Wednesday, March 10, when Google sent him a congratulatory note, in which he offered him $ 60,000 for his proposal for a research project that would analyze how companies develop AI that s ‘used to detect emotions. Stark said he immediately felt he had to turn down the award to show his support for Gebru and Mitchell, as well as those who still remain on Google’s ethical AI team.

“My first thought was,‘ I have to turn it down, ’” Stark told CNN Business.

Luke Stark turned down a $ 60,000 Google search award in support of expelled leaders from his AI ethics group.
Stark is among a growing number of academics citing Gebru and Mitchell’s departures for recent decisions to lose funding or opportunities provided by the company. Some AI conference organizers are rethinking Google as a sponsor. And at least one scholar who has received a large check from Google in the past has stated so will not seek your financial support until changes are made to the company.

“With good conscience, I can no longer accept funding from a company that treats its employees that way,” Vijay Chidambaram, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies storage systems, told CNN Business. Chidambaram previously received $ 30,000 from Google in 2018 for a research project.

The money involved is insignificant to Google. But rising consequences of Google’s tensions with its ethical AI team now pose a risk to the company reputation and height in the AI ​​community. This is crucial as Google fights for talent, both as employees of the company and the names connected to it in the academic community.

“I think this spread is broader than even the company realizes,” Stark said.

Solidarity descent

Despite his initial inclination, Stark did not immediately turn down the Google award. He spoke with colleagues about what he planned to do: “People supported any decision I made,” he said, before posting his response to Google the following Friday. He thanked the company for the “vote of confidence” in his investigation, but wrote that he “declined this award in solidarity with Dr. Gebru and Mitchell, his teammates and all those who have been in similar situations.” according to emails viewed by CNN Business.

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“I look forward to the opportunity to collaborate with Google Research again, by the time the organization and its leaders have reflected on their decision in this case, have addressed the damage they have caused and committed , of word and deed, to foster critical research and products that support equity and justice, ”Stark wrote.

He he tweeted about his decision to reject the award as well, to make it public, noting that many people can’t afford to turn down this funding from Google or other companies. Stark can give up the money because his Western University department is funded enough. The Google award would have meant extra money for the research, he said.
“All we can do is what we can do reasonably, and that was something I felt I could do,” Stark said. he tweeted.

Gebru said he appreciated Stark’s action.

“It’s a pretty huge thing for someone to turn down Google’s sponsorship,” he told CNN Business. “Especially someone who is early in their career.”

A Google spokesman said that over the past 15 years, the company has provided more than 6,500 academic and research grants to those who do not belong to Google. Stark is the first person to reject her, according to the spokesman.

“It was a real failure the way they were treated”

Still, Stark’s decision is only the last show of solidarity with Gebru and Mitchell.

The first obvious sign of anger came just after Gebru left Google. A media message denouncing his departure and demanding transparency about Google’s decision regarding the research paper quickly garnered signatures from Google employees and supporters within the academic and intellectual fields. by the end of March, its number of followers had risen to about 2,700 Google employees and more than 4,300 more.
Google is aware that its reputation for AI research has been damaged recently and has said it intends to fix it.
In early March, the conference at which Gebru and his co-authors had presented the paper, the ACM Conference on Justice, Accountability and Transparency, or FAccT, stopped its sponsorship deal with Google. Gebru is one of the founders of the conference and was part of the first executive committee of FAccT. Google had been a sponsor every year since the annual conference began in 2018. Michael Ekstrand, co-chair of the ACM FAccT network, confirmed to CNN Business that sponsorship was stopped, saying the move was determined to be “in the best interest of the community ”and for the group to“ revisit ”its sponsorship policy for 2022. Ekstrand said Gebru was not involved in the decision.
Also in March, two academics protested Google’s actions piulant that they decided not to attend a robotics research event by invitation only which was held online. Hadas Kress-Gazit, a professor of robotics at Cornell, was one of them; she said she was invited in January, but became more reluctant as the event approached.

“It was a real fiasco [Gebru and Mitchell] were treated. “No one even apologized to them,” he told CNN Business in a recent interview. “I don’t want to interact with companies that behave this way with the best researchers.”

Google’s efforts to push the boundaries of AI

Google is aware that its reputation as a research institution has been harmed in recent months and the company has said it wanted to fix it. At a recent Google City Council meeting, which Reuters first reported on and from which CNN Business also obtained audio, the company outlined the changes it is making to its internal research and publishing practices.

“I believe that the way to regain trust is to continue publishing cutting-edge work in many, many areas, including overstepping the boundaries on issues related to responsible AI, publishing things that are deeply interesting to the research community. best ways to continue to be a leader in the field of research, ”said Jeff Dean, Google’s head of AI. He responded to a question from employees about outside researchers who said they would read Google articles “now with more skepticism.”

Google is trying to end the controversy over its ethical AI team. It's not going well

Gebru hopes that, like FAccT, more conferences will re-evaluate their relationships with technology companies ’research labs. Historically, much of the work in the development and study of AI has been done in academic settings. But as companies have found more and more commercial uses for the technology, the lines between academia and the corporate world have blurred. Google is just one of many technology companies that exerts a huge influence on academic conferences that publish many of the work of their researchers; its employees sit on conference boards and sponsor numerous conferences each year, sometimes worth tens of thousands of dollars.

For example, Google and some subsidiaries of its parent company, Alphabet, were listed as $ 20,000 and $ 10,000 “gold” platinum sponsors at the International Conference on Machine Learning or ICML and the Conference on Processing Systems. of Neural Information or NeurIPS, 2020: Both Key AI Conferences. And some of the company’s employees sit on its organizing committees.

ICML President John Langford said the conference is “currently open to sponsorship” from Google for its 2021 conference, which is scheduled for July.

“There are quite a few ongoing discussions about how ICML as a conference should foster a good culture and machine learning practices with future sponsorship policies that are part of this discussion,” he added.

NeurIPS CEO Mary Ellen Perry said the conference has not yet made its annual call for sponsorships, but that applications “will be evaluated based on a set of selection guidelines set by the presidencies. this year’s sponsorship ”; NeurIPS is scheduled for December.

However, for Stark and others in the academic research community, their criteria for accepting Google funds have already changed.

“The extra money for the research would be fantastic,” Stark said. “But it was something I felt I couldn’t catch.”

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