Hundreds of Google staffers met on Friday and discussed what activists allege is a frequent consequence of criticizing the company: Retaliation.
Hundreds of Google staffers met on Friday and discussed what activists allege is a frequent consequence of criticising the company: Retaliation.
On Monday, two of those organisers, Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton, wrote an email saying Google had punished them because of their activism. The two asked staffers to join them on Friday to discuss the company's alleged actions, and during the meeting they shared more than a dozen other stories of internal retribution that they had collected over the past week. Like many meetings at Google, participants could watch via a video live-stream and submit questions and comments.
This is a pattern, these are systemic issues, and we will change it only by speaking up and acting together.Whittaker is a researcher at Google specialising in artificial intelligence. She co-founded a research group, AI Now, that is affiliated with New York University. Whittaker wrote to her colleagues in an email that she was told she would have to "abandon my work on AI ethics."
Whittaker tried to get transferred to another Google AI team, a move she said was supported by Jeff Dean, the company's head of artificial intelligence. Soon after, Whittaker was involved with another protest: an employee petition against the appointment of Kay Coles James to an AI ethics counsel organised by Google. The company ended up scrapping the group.
Several current and former employees took to Twitter on Friday to register complaints using the hashtag #NotOkGoogle, a riff on the company's virtual assistant product. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," wrote Alex Hanna, a member of Google's cloud division.
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