Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

“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,” a Google spokesman said in a statement.<p>This feels pretty cut and dry to me. Meg exported business material from the company. That a fire-able offense at any company.<p>I feel bad for her but I honestly don’t understand why she is even surprised she got fired.

&quot;Firing @timnitGebru created a domino effect of trauma for me and the rest of the team, and I believe we are being increasingly punished for that trauma.&quot;<p>Wow. These activists are truly living in an alternate reality.

They also seem to have sidelined Samy Bengio (Yoshua&#x27;s brother) who was the skip-level manager of the team and, as far as I can tell, backed both of them and continued to: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;L_badikho&#x2F;status&#x2F;1362892301979312128" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;L_badikho&#x2F;status&#x2F;1362892301979312128</a><p>As can be seen above, current team members state that Google is running a smear campaign against both of them. We should emphatically not take Google&#x27;s words at face value here either.<p>All of this increases my respect for Microsoft Research immensely. They&#x27;ve been more hands off and had researchers publish work critical of MS technologies. It&#x27;s quite telling that supposedly more open Google is incapable of creating as open a research org as MSR, which remains in my view an excellent example of what an industrial research org can be.

For context:<p>1. Gebru is alleged to have terrorized a Google Brain manuscript discussion forum with unfounded accusations of racist disregard for her contributions <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;MachineLearning&#x2F;comments&#x2F;k77sxz&#x2F;d_timnit_gebru_and_google_megathread&#x2F;geqzqlq&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;MachineLearning&#x2F;comments&#x2F;k77sxz&#x2F;d_t...</a><p>There is some disagreement within this thread as to exactly what happened, but it seems to me that Gebru had a tendency of taking perceived slights and blowing them out of proportion, creating a more difficult work environment.<p>2. Mitchell was fired for stealing thousands of company emails<p>I wasn&#x27;t impressed with the process Google used to rid themselves of Gebru, but let&#x27;s not pretend that Google lost the ethics A-team here.

It’s a really common refrain here that if you are employee critical of your employer you should expect to get fired… Well perhaps, but you’d think that specifically someone in AI ethics needs to be empowered to speak up against both internal external issues. Or did google just want an research ethics hit team against other companies technologies?<p>Makes me wonder if project zero is really trying as hard as possible with googles own products. Clearly it’s impossible to be an independent team at google.

She was fired for violating company confidentiality, anything she says otherwise about her gender, race, culture, etc is just a deflection, but it’s probably coming.

You will learn a lot about Margaret Mitchell&#x27;s firing by simply reading this piece she shared publicly on Twitter: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;d&#x2F;1ERi2crDToYhYjEjxRoOzO-uOUeLgdoLPfnx1JOErg2w&#x2F;edit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;d&#x2F;1ERi2crDToYhYjEjxRoOzO-uO...</a><p>A few punchlines:<p>&quot;Every moment where Jeff Dean and Megan Kacholia do not take responsibility for their actions is another moment where the company as a whole stands by silently as if to intentionally send the horrifying message that Dr. Gebru deserves to be treated this way.&quot;<p>&quot;Dr. Gebru refused to subjugate herself to a system requiring her to belittle her integrity as a researcher and degrade herself below her fellow researchers. Within the next year, let those of us in positions of privilege and power come to terms with the discomfort of being part of an unjust system that devalued one of the world’s leading scientists, and keep something like this from ever happening again.&quot;<p>In short, she was getting paid handsomely while calling out her bosses by name and taking them through the dirt. I have nothing but respect for people willing to fall on their sword for the sake of making the world a better place. But if she thought even for a second that she could possibly be a martyr and also keep her job, she&#x27;s delusional. I have a hard time aligning myself with people who are fighting for the right cause, but have completely lost their touch with reality.<p>Perhaps she expected to get fired and knew that moving the files was only going to accelerate the inevitable? In that case, she deserved to be celebrated. But if she thought that she was untouchable, and in addition to being a major PITA for her employer also ended up so easily getting caught red-handed for a fireable offense - then I start questioning her judgement and have to wonder if her arguments against Google are equally skewed.

My general impression of this entire thing, starting with Gebru being fired, is that the department should have never been named &quot;ethical AI&quot; anything.<p>It&#x27;s research into social stuff. How AI interacts with things like faces and how that gets biased by a lot of social issues, like racism and existing class stratification related to race (among other things).<p>These are things that can have &quot;ethical&quot; implications but when you start talking about &quot;Ethical AI,&quot; you inadvertently convince people &quot;We are the Good Guys. We will treat everyone in some extremely above board fashion. Our little department is going to single-handedly right all historical racial and gendered wrongs ever in the history of the universe and all the baggage all of society is living with as a consequence.&quot;<p>Good luck with that. It isn&#x27;t happening and the implied contract there suggesting it will is just going to piss people off and give them unrealistic expectations.<p>No, I am absolutely <i>not</i> justifying shitty behavior of any sort, not in this case nor in the general case. Don&#x27;t come at me with ridiculous accusations of that sort.<p>It&#x27;s hard to make progress. It&#x27;s actively counterproductive to inadvertently set expectations that this one department will meet some crazy strict set of <i>ethics</i> at all times every minute of every day in contrast with the entire rest of the world where we duke it out for small gains on a regular basis.

&gt; Within the next year, let those of us in positions of privilege and power come to terms with the discomfort of being part of an unjust system<p>If you have this pinned to your Twitter (on 2&#x2F;5) about your employer why are you still working there and not resigning? It took Google 14 days to fire her, which I suppose is the typical two weeks notice since that date.

Somehow Microsoft Research manages to be a much more open place than Google and has researchers publish critical pieces all the time. It&#x27;s ultimately a bit sad that Google, the company started by two PhD students, is incapable of creating a similar culture to MSR.

&quot;exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees&quot;<p>If true, that is not just a fireable offence, it is a criminal offence.

For people who are familiar with this, I have a question. How does research in an industrial lab vs. a university work, insofar as independence is concerned? In a university, aside from well-defined ethics guidelines for conducting research (e.g., involving animal or human subjects), staff are generally free to publish the findings of their research at any venue they see fit. Many are tenured professors, so they also have the added guarantee of tenure, which makes them unfireable save for clear violations of policies such as sexual harassment.<p>How do these things work at industrial labs, such as those of Google and Microsoft?

I’ve been wondering how sincere the Silicon Valley corporate mantra of Be yourself, Be authentic, be open to management really was.<p>There was so much idealism even on Hacker news. Nowadays I witness the strange contradiction of people bashing giant tech companies while mostly discussing how to found the next giant tech company.<p>A lot of us did genuinely believe it. However as the companies grew and became mega corps the realities of life in normal companies have slowly made themsleves felt.<p>It’s a bit like the Adam Curtis documentary hyper normalization. Where we all pretend that everything is still the same as before, but beneath the still free sushi ,massages and high compensation a lot has changed.

Seems like this might relate to the reshuffling of AI organization at Google: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.google&#x2F;technology&#x2F;ai&#x2F;marian-croak-responsible-ai&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.google&#x2F;technology&#x2F;ai&#x2F;marian-croak-responsible-a...</a><p>From a complete outsider, this seems like a smart shift toward more mature leadership.

No qualms for Googlers getting a reality check. I don&#x27;t get why people think they work at a liberal think-tank where no consequences exist for sharing opinions or confidential data about the company publicly. Had someone on my team decided to write a similar doc like the one Margaret published, I&#x27;d have fired them on the spot. Shut your mouth and move on if your ideology conflicts with your employer&#x27;s.

It&#x27;s pretty important to get this story straight: She moved files when she wasn&#x27;t supposed to. This seems like a pretty standard firing. People are already claiming on twitter that Google is assaulting ethical AI, and I just don&#x27;t see it.<p><i>Google did not immediately comment on those claims. Its statement said of Mitchell: “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.”</i><p>Yeah, uh, don&#x27;t do this.

Existing discussion of Dr. Mitchell’s tweet announcing her firing<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26198789" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26198789</a>

Dr. Gebru originally asked, as part of her complaint, that the names of the people reviewing her work be revealed. Does that sound particularly ethical to you? At best she wanted to talk to them face to face about their criticisms. At worst (and this is more likely if you ask me) she just wanted to throw -isms in their faces.<p>Just to make sure people don&#x27;t forget that aspect of what appears to be the root of this situation.

I&#x27;m not interested in the details of this, but from a distance - people sure do make life difficult for themselves, bringing politics and their opinions and controversy into workplaces. It&#x27;s always tech and academia, too - you&#x27;d think it&#x27;d be enough to get just paid shitloads of money for interesting knowledge work and save the drama for friends in the pub (or the bar, or whatever).

I’ve learned that if your colleagues don’t like you, you’re more likely to get fired.<p>To minimize chance of getting fired, avoid making people dislike you, try to make people like you.

I found her ted talk, it seems very hyperbolic and doesn&#x27;t really have much of an understanding of what these systems are.<p>&gt;I put this picture of a burning house into a image classifier running on my computer and it returned &quot;beautiful&quot; and that sent chills down my spine<p>These don&#x27;t strike me as particularly valuable insights, does she have an interesting body of work somewhere?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=twWkGt33X_k" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=twWkGt33X_k</a>

Out of curiousity I checked out Dr. Mitchells Twitter feed. On her feed for the past several months, shes been posting and reposting articles that are heavily critical of her employer.<p>Now there is a line between public and private space, but many people use Twitter as a professional network. And Dr. Mitchell includes her Google credentials in her bio.<p>So given her substantial, critical, public views of her employer on a quasi-professional network - what did she expect?

Here[1] is a document she wrote on the subject of Dr. Timnit Gebru&#x27;s recent firing from Google.<p>1 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;d&#x2F;1ERi2crDToYhYjEjxRoOzO-uOUeLgdoLPfnx1JOErg2w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;d&#x2F;1ERi2crDToYhYjEjxRoOzO-uO...</a>

At the same time, Google unveiled a &quot;Black owned businesses near me&quot; on Google Maps. How has that been received? We need look no further than Twitter: (the Tl;Dr. racists are using this to lower all ratings of these Black owned businesses)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;dmetaxak&#x2F;status&#x2F;1362856231212212224" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;dmetaxak&#x2F;status&#x2F;1362856231212212224</a><p>Google recently added a feature allowing users to search for &quot;Black-owned businesses near you&quot;. They&#x27;re advertising it all over the place (see below).<p>I&#x27;ve also already started hearing from Black-owned businesses I follow that they&#x27;re seeing an influx of racist fake reviews...<p>BLK MKT Vintage, for instance, got over 30 new, clearly fake reviews in 24 hours (e.g., calling them &quot;a store that promotes segregation&quot;, saying their items were &quot;broken&quot; and &quot;covered in dead cockroaches&quot;).<p>And if you look at the users writing those reviews...<p>The users leaving those fraudulent 1-star reviews for this business are also leaving 1-star reviews on dozens of other Black-owned businesses.<p>All this while Google pays for PR lauding this new feature.<p>We need to ask: is it always a good idea to make marginalized groups more visible? Whom does it benefit?<p>Have such companies thought through the consequences for those they&#x27;re &quot;helping&quot;? Was this done <i>at the direction of those groups</i> or paternalistically on behalf of?<p>This is yet another example of why app features cannot and should not replace community networks and mutual aid.<p>Technosolutionism, the white savior complex, and paternalism towards marginalized groups lead to selfish PR efforts that actively harm those they ostensibly &quot;help&quot;.

Good riddance, work is work, political agendas outside the office space please.

- 135,000 Google employees<p>- 2,000 signed a petition to support Timnit [1]<p>- 2 employees resigned to support Timnit [2]<p>When it comes to voting with your feet, no one actually gives a shit.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;04&#x2F;thousands-petition-google-for-answers-on-timnit-gebru-departure.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;04&#x2F;thousands-petition-google-fo...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;02&#x2F;04&#x2F;tech&#x2F;google-employees-quit&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;02&#x2F;04&#x2F;tech&#x2F;google-employees-quit&#x2F;in...</a>

I accept I will be looked at negatively for this, but I simply don&#x27;t believe Google has any obligation to keep paying giant salaries to people who are actively - by their own words - working to show how harmful Google and&#x2F;or its underlying technologies are to the designated victims of the age.<p>She was moving files and &quot;private data on other employees&quot; (?) off the Google internal network into her personal possession, in order to contravene their policies and share their work against their wishes.<p>You may be able to claim this is hypocritical as they claim to support openness, but I really think the very clear and states goal of undermining Google&#x27;s alleged negative impact on non-whites negates any mutual goodwill that should be assumed.<p>TL;dr this is a completely legit firing, even if her intentions are good.<p>Tech companies will increasingly find themselves wrestling with a fifth column if this sort of thing persists. Just wait until the Woke stuff really gets tied up with unionism, and you&#x27;ll see an explosion of allegations of &quot;union-busting-to-protect-white-supremacy&quot;, some of which has already been alleged of Bezos and Musk.<p>None of this is good for anyone, in my opinion.

Possibly she violated policy by sending internal emails to an ex-employee. That is fireable offense, yes. But this whole avalanche of incidents at google is still ugly and appears to be out of control. A bad look for google. Has anyone over there heard of damage control? Did it need to get this bad? At some level this situation must have been enabled by really clueless management. Or, it could just be the reality that google&#x27;s use of user data is basically unethical and cannot coexist with a real AI Ethics team. It kinda looks like that.

As noted in her pinned tweet (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mmitchell_ai&#x2F;status&#x2F;1357819673455202304" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mmitchell_ai&#x2F;status&#x2F;1357819673455202304</a>), she was locked out of Google&#x27;s system after sending an email supporting Timnit Gebru. (EDIT: and allegations of systems abuse; see child comment)<p>This new tweet makes the firing official.

It seems the tobacco industry had more luck with their scientific advisors.

It seems AI ethics are on the decline. But in 10-20 years weapons of math destruction which includes AI will be the subject of Congressional and Senate hearings. I would go into public policy in the government&#x2F;think tank, maybe with an academic gig as well. The Ethics on the medical and criminal justice side seem more pressing than search itself.

Don&#x27;t know who&#x27;s right but AI ethics AND harassment in one package feels like some sort of next level.

If we are to believe the memo that Google wrote about their investigation for firing her, then it seems pretty cut and dry. Either she should have tried going through official channels first, then be smart in her own investigation, or google is lying.<p>The truth is probably somewhere in between.

Honestly, who&#x27;s the bone head who set up this department in first place? It&#x27;s like letting the cock sleep in the henhouse. Either this department is one big charade, or it tries to do a good job and is in constant and acrimonious conflict with rest of the org.<p>It&#x27;s like a bank or HF having a compliance department who is not only responsible for ensuring rules (it doesn&#x27;t entirely understand) are followed, and making up new rules at the same time. In effect, a dual legislative and judicial branch.

&quot; tying executive pay companywide to diversity and inclusion efforts.&quot; - how does this work? I cannot imagine the CTO doing recruiting of minorities to meet diversity targets instead of doing the work one was hired for. I saw this happening in other companies and that had devastating effects on hiring quality, employee morale and productivity.

Ethical.<p>Anyone experienced the following?<p>Working on product, features, etc., may potentially be unethical to end-users. May introduce unknown biases, pose privacy issue, gray areas, to end-users, security and other related similar topics.<p>Speak out of such issue to only find an adverse reaction. Timely delivery of the product is more important.

So they fired an ethics leader because she thought something unethical might be going on and was taking steps to investigate it by automating a review of her email, or something like that.<p>It seems she may have been passing on some of that information to persons outside of Google, which isn&#x27;t great, but I also don&#x27;t see much in the way of details on what that actually entailed, so it&#x27;s hard to judge how inappropriate those actions might have been. Either way, still a bad look for Google.<p>Remembering the mid 00&#x27;s, it&#x27;s always jarring to juxtapose &quot;Don&#x27;t be Evil&quot; with how they currently operate.

She gave a talk at my school once, she was invited by my then advisor. This was in 2017 right after she left MSR. We had a brief change, and even back then you can tell she’s not into kowtowing to the patriarchy. It’s quite hard for ambitious women in compsci, they have to walk a tight edge between firm and “motherly”. Men have no such constraints.<p>——————————————<p>Clarification: I’m speaking about women researchers in an academic setting in general. And hoping to lend a bit of detail on this researcher as a person.

I hate Google, but I have to say this article is garbage. It sounds like she was fired for perfectly legitimate reasons. Trying to make it about racism or sexism is a disservice to those who actually care about those issues.

&gt; Mitchell has been locked out of the corporate email since last month after what a source says was her effort to search corporate correspondence for evidence to back up Gebru&#x27;s claim of discrimination and harassment<p>It sounds like she dredged through her email, and sent emails she found to an ex-employee. That&#x27;s probably going to get you fired.

Person who called their employer sexist and racist is fired (no a second person).

Good?

On friday PM. Classy.

I&#x27;m going to sound insensitive to some but this is too much soap opera

So what? Why is this important?

Google response (from Jan):<p>&quot;Our security systems automatically lock an employee’s corporate account when they detect that the account is at risk of compromise due to credential problems or when an automated rule involving the handling of sensitive data has been triggered. In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts. We explained this to the employee earlier today. We are actively investigating this matter as part of standard procedures to gather additional details.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;venturebeat.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;01&#x2F;20&#x2F;google-targets-ai-ethics-lead-margaret-mitchell-after-firing-timnit-gebru&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;venturebeat.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;01&#x2F;20&#x2F;google-targets-ai-ethics-...</a>

&gt;Unfireable save for clear violations of policies such as sexual harassment<p>I would take a look at (and consider donating to) FIRE to understand the current state of academic freedom in universities.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thefire.org&#x2F;news-and-media&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thefire.org&#x2F;news-and-media&#x2F;</a><p>Just to give two examples:<p>Bret Weinstein was fired from Evergreen for not participating in a no-white-people-on-campus day (and he was also subject to credible death threats, requiring police escorts when present on campus)<p>Gordon Klein was suspended for refusing to promise to give higher grades to black students. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nypost.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;10&#x2F;ucla-suspends-professor-for-refusing-leniency-for-black-students&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nypost.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;10&#x2F;ucla-suspends-professor-for-re...</a><p>And then we have the epidemic of academic mobbing, where colleagues engage in herding behavior that focus their rage on one of their colleagues in a type of modern equivalent of Monsters on Maple Street. It is estimated that 12 percent of those mobbed end up committing suicide. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.universityaffairs.ca&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;in-my-opinion&#x2F;academic-mobbing-become-campus-tormentors&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.universityaffairs.ca&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;in-my-opinion&#x2F;acade...</a><p>There are many, many things that will get you fired or subject to attack in the modern university, and I don&#x27;t see any reason to view academia as a place that provides more intellectual freedom than private industry. Indeed, it is often the epicenter of cancel culture and petty utopian dictators.

- 135,000 Google employees<p>- 2,000 signed a petition to support Timnit [1]<p>- 2 employees resigned to support Timnit [2]<p>When it comes to voting with your feet, no one actually gives a shit.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;04&#x2F;thousands-petition-google-for-answers-on-timnit-gebru-departure.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;04&#x2F;thousands-petition-google-fo...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;02&#x2F;04&#x2F;tech&#x2F;google-employees-quit&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;02&#x2F;04&#x2F;tech&#x2F;google-employees-quit&#x2F;in...</a>

This sounds like a poem she wrote <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;margaret_mitchell_how_we_can_build_ai_to_help_humans_not_hurt_us" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;margaret_mitchell_how_we_can_build...</a><p>How does one get to lead such a high caliber team at Google AI with background in Linguistics of all things?<p>What are some of accomplishments this person has achieved, beyond being from one or many oppressed victim group(s) that Google needed to hire to fend off lack of diversity claims?

&quot;AI ethics researcher&quot; is codeword for &quot;leftist activist&quot;.

&quot;Google fires <i>another</i> AI ethics leader.&quot;<p>Somewhat loaded title, as it implies a previous one was fired, which was not at all established as the case.

They fired another person whose LITERAL job is to help them not be evil.<p>Before long people won&#x27;t believe it if you tell them Google&#x27;s initial motto was &quot;Don&#x27;t Be Evil.&quot;

And Jeff Dean doesn’t resign yet, no surprise.

Google only built the Ethical AI team to placate internal criticism of its attempts to sell AI tech to the Department of Defense and building a search engine for China with censorship built-in. They were supposed to be window-dressing, not actually rock the boat, so when they did they were culled.<p>Since they are not contributing to the bottom line, directly or indirectly, the disaffection in the team couldn&#x27;t matter less to management. They cleverly appointed a black woman VP to neuter the group without the bad optics of the initial firing of Ms. Gebru, and I expect the remainder of the team will in the not-so-distant future be reassigned or let go, and replaced by a new cast of ethnically diverse yes-people who will produce lots of impressive-sounding papers but not any criticism of substance.

<i>“We all live in the digital poorhouse. We have always lived in the world we built for the poor. We create a society that has no use for the disabled or the elderly, and then are cast aside when we are hurt or grow old. We measure human worth based only on the ability to earn a wage, and suffer in a world that undervalues care and community. We base our economy on exploiting the labor of racial and ethnic minorities, and watch lasting inequities snuff out human potential. We see the world as inevitably riven by bloody competition and are left unable to recognize the many ways we cooperate and lift each other up.<p>But only the poor lived in the common dorms of the county poorhouse. Only the poor were put under the diagnostic microscope of scientific clarity. Today, we all live among the digital traps we have laid for the destitute.“</i><p>- Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

A company whose motto is &quot;Don&#x27;t worry, be evil&quot; probably shouldn&#x27;t have an ethics department.

Dr. Gebru was fired for having consulted a lawyer. (Jeff Dean and others were aware that Dr. Gebru was consulting a lawyer long before her termination). Employers can do stupid things, but not illegal things, and it&#x27;s beyond stupid to fire somebody for talking to an attorney. Google felt threatened and so they acted, fair and simple. While it&#x27;s OK to feel threatened, it&#x27;s not OK to retaliate, which is what Google, legally, did.<p>Dr. Mitchell was likely talking with the same legal team-- it sounds like Google cited cause for Dr. Mitchell sending documents (non-IP) outside of Google&#x27;s network. So Dr. Mitchell is almost certainly also a victim of retaliation.<p>The bottom line: Sundar Pichai has again and again admitted to Google&#x27;s struggles with retaining or regaining trust, and here he has again failed to act effectively. Google&#x27;s behavior here is, legally, maximally adversarial and strictly for Google&#x27;s benefit. Sundar Pichai has failed yet again to show Google can be trustworthy.