Google fires AI ethics lead Margaret Mitchell

The move comes about two months after the departure of leading Black researcher Timnit Gebru from the company

Google has fired Margaret Mitchell, the founder and co-head of the company's AI ethics unit, in a move expected to escalate the internal fight within the company that is ongoing following the departure of Timnit Gebru in December.

Google told the Guardian that an internal investigation revealed Mitchell had violated its code of conduct by moving files outside the company.

'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,' Google said.

Mitchell also announced the news via a tweet, simply reading "I'm fired."

Google's AI research director, Zoubin Ghahramani, and a legal representative of the company informed Mitchell's team of her firing in a meeting on Friday.

Google employee Alex Hanna stated on Twitter that the company was running a "smear campaign" against Gebru and Mitchell.

Mitchell was locked out of Google's systems in January, including her emails and calendars. At the time, Google said that its systems had detected an account exfiltrating thousands of files and sharing them with multiple external accounts.

The company added that the employee was informed about the issue, and it opened an internal investigation as part of standard procedures.

Google's AI ethics unit has been under scrutiny since December, following the departure of leading Black researcher Timnit Gebru. Dr Gebru claimed that she was terminated by Google, although Google says Gebru resigned.

Dr Gebru and Mitchell had called for greater diversity among Google's research staff and voiced concern that the firm was starting to censor academic papers critical of Google's products.

Media reports claimed that Dr Gebru had been working on a paper that scrutinised bias in artificial intelligence, and mentioned Google's own technology, which the company has been using in its search business. Gebru had submitted her paper for internal review at Google in October, but Google rejected it. Management later told her she had been dismissed.

Thousands of Google employees protested in response. A group of researchers from Google's ethical AI team wrote a letter to senior officials, demanding the company commit to new policies and bring greater academic freedom for workers.

Google said on Friday that it was working to improve pre-publication review of papers and to bring in new policies to grade executives based on workforce diversity goals.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai described the changes in an email to employees, according to Bloomberg. The message included comments by Jeff Dean, the head of the AI and research unit, saying he was sorry how he handled Gebru's exit.

"I understand we could have and should have handled the situation with more sensitivity," Dean wrote.

"And for that, I am sorry," he added.