Google fires Timnit Gebru after a dispute over an ethics paper

Timnit Gebru, co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team, said on 2 December 2020 that Google had forced her out over a paper it asked her to retract. Google said it accepted a resignation; Gebru said she had threatened to resign and was never given that choice.

Why it mattered Objections from Google’s own employees turned the dispute into a test of how technology companies govern research that criticizes their own systems.