Google AI scientist resigns after colleagues fired for pointing out lack of diversity

After two controversial resignations at Google, its research manager Samy Bengio who spent over 14 years in the company, on Tuesday announced that he was resigning to "pursue better opportunities." Bnegio who was among Google's first employees involved in a decade-old project known as Google Brain is said to have taken this decision as he was shocked after fellow researcher Gebru was fired in December last year.

Ex-Google staff fired by firm raised issues that affected other employees

In an email Bengio had sent, he said that his decision to leave Google was to pursue "other exciting opportunities" and that his last day would be April 28. According to a leading news agency, Gebru was fired as he criticised Google's products and lack of its efforts to increase workforce diversity.

Google also fired another staff who worked with Bengio. Staff scientist Margaret Mitchell was fired in February after she was allegedly accused of transferring electronic files outside the company. However, Mitchell said that she was removed from Google as she tried "to raise concerns about race and gender inequity, while she was also vocal against the firing of Gebru."
 
Bengio defended the pair and was shocked after the two employees were removed from the company. Mitchell and Gebru were part of the AI project that has a dozen people working on ethical issues related to AI software, and this team was headed by Bengio. In a Facebook post last year, Bengio expressed shock over the firing of the two.

'Bengio put in efforts to make research organisation more inclusive'

In the latest development, even as Bengio does not mention the names of Mitchell and Gebru in his resignation email, people familiar with the matter said that Bengio's decision was largely influenced by the removal of the two. Bengio writes in the email “I learned so much with all of you, in terms of machine learning research of course, but also on how difficult yet important it is to organize a large team of researchers so as to promote long term ambitious research, exploration, rigour, diversity, and inclusion.”

A researcher working on Google Brain, Nicolas Le Roux said that Bnegio had put in efforts to make the research organisation more inclusive which "created a space where everyone felt welcome." However, Google had recently also moved oversight of the AI ethics team from Bengio to vice president Marian Croak, aiming for certain major changes.