The fallout from Google’s firing of its AI Ethics team continues in a highly contentious climate: Google defenders demand loyalty and silence, while critics of Google worry about their safety to speak up. This fear also paralyzes Stanford University, which has yet to officially respond to Google’s treatment of Stanford PhD, Dr. Timnit Gebru.
In December 2020, Google fired Gebru, one of its top artificial intelligence researchers for refusing to retract a co-authored paper about the dangers of large language models. After Gebru, AI Ethics team member Margaret Mitchell was also fired, in addition to other high-profile firings including April Curly. Several important researchers resigned in protest and have since been rehired elsewhere. For the Stanford community the question remains, what if anything, should Stanford do about this treatment of one of our former students by a company that benefits from the training Stanford provides? Gebru’s firing is a major story, and Stanford’s subsequent silence reveals the complex relationship of the university to the Big Tech it spawns.
While Stanford official channels have largely deflected questions, students launched a number of campaigns for Gebru and the AI Ethics team. One student effort included making #JustforTimnit t-shirts and stickers for Gebru. Currently 1000 students and Gebru supporters are wearing these t-shirts:
Stickers are circulating too. These for Gebru and several others for Mitchell and Curly too.
Two days ago I posted the #JusticeForTimnit petition on Change.org for the student group, which asks the Stanford faculty senate to debate banning Google from on campus recruitment until Google offers to reinstate their AI Ethics team. Many people wondered why the Stanford faculty senate should address Google’s actions at all. In fact, responses reverted with such intensity they demonstrated that regardless the content of a petition about Stanford and Google, now is the time for discussion.
In the first 24 hours, the petition received 19000+ hits and 500+ shares. Aside from the barrage of trolls who object that the petition is really about our supposed “selfishness,” and “leftist idealogy” [sic], we’ve received at least as many vaguely supportive, though reluctant intonations:
“It’s terrible what happened to Timnit and Margaret, Big Tech is evil… but I think you ought to have said/done [something else] instead.”
Many of the supportive replies also pleaded financial precarity, such as the comment:
“Absolutely support your effort, but Google helps me make ends meet on my miserable university salary.”
and
“sorry, I hope to work in the tech industry someday so speaking up about Google will just hurt me.”
The silence about Google's treatment of its AI Ethics team reminds me of when I lived in East Germany in 1989 before the Berlin Wall came down. Everyone feared for their lives and livelihoods. Even things said in private caused great trembling because someone could inform on you. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) private sphere was polluted by an official sphere which determined all correct narratives.
Wait. How is this Capitalist Leviathan Google, or Big Tech, anything like the East Germany?
I had the strange déjà vu experience when people responded to my petition with notes like:
“Let’s talk off-line in person, OK? Maybe a walk in the park without devices?
Other responses I received online transmitted less GDR vibes than typical American social media dross. I’ll list just a few of the more symptomatic comments, from the sublime to ridiculous. They indicate that Dr. Gebru’s experience is no single incident, but the tip of the iceberg. Our Stanford petition, meanwhile, proved just one small speck on that icy subject; it touched a nerve indicating the need for clarity about the university and its relation to tech.
All statements are quotes without correction, including typos, misspellings, and the news to me that I have a “husband.” I do have a boyfriend, Russell Berman, the only tenured faculty member who has signed the petition so far. (And regarding the first comment below; the petition explicitly does not tell students to avoid working at Google--but Google's behavior probably takes care of that.)
· How dare you prohibit students from working at Google!
· You leftists aren’t willing to hear Google’s side of the story!
· Why is any of this Stanford’s responsibility?
· The faculty senate doesn’t handle problems like this.
· Stanford is wrong here they should have hired Timnit and Margaret first thing.
· Why aren’t you going after all of Silicon Valley?
· Your jealous about google’s profits
· You should have made a petition about making a tech union.
· Your Marxist-leninist propaganda is not welcome in tech
· You’ll get nowhere accommodating Capitalism and a university complicit in worker oppression
· Stanford pretends to care about DEI but only uses its BIPOC as alibis for their white supremacy
· The real problem is Stanford needs to hire more Black instructors
· Tech unions would be stronger if people like you didn’t undermine them with petitions that ask for university intervention
· Universities are corporate evil.
· Your husband teaches with Peter Thiel.
· Don’t you understand Stanford is in bed with Silicon Valley?
· Your petition should be about getting better training for tech managers
· You have no idea what you’re talking about
· Isn’t there some office on campus that handles this?
· How can Stanford criticize Google if it failed to hire prominent women AI Ethics instructors like Safiya Noble?
· You are talking to the wrong people
· Tech will never change, students need to choose other professions
· Cancel culture gets you nowhere haha on you.
The collision of these different agendas often leads to ad hominem attacks and intolerance of any position accept inaction. There you have it. No response to Google’s actions is ever the right response. This is how tech giants maintain control. It’s time to talk about tech and what it’s doing to our students.