The letters - Timnit Gebru's and Jeff Dean's
Dec 5, 2020
64 Comments
Hi everyone,
Many of you are by now aware that Gebru's employment with Google is terminated. You also know that this involved an email Gebru sent to a large internal group, and you are aware of a response that Jeff wrote to explain the situation and wish her all the best.
The link below contains those letters.
https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical
I want to keep the post factual, will reserve my personal feelings and analysis here, but will add more in the comments that follow.
The withering email that got an ethical AI researcher fired at Google 
Platformer
comments
Gebru was way out of line in writing that email. She started creating a toxic environment and started to create an environment of hatred with her mail.
Megan took the right call in firing her. (Megan has the decency to not call it a firing in order to not humiliate her, but we all know what this is.)
It is interesting that she is going after Jeff and not Megan, I think for two reasons - Jeff is male so this will be more attuned to her "oppressed female" narrative, and that Jeff has a bigger reputation.
Her paper which she is so riled up about is incomplete and likely agenda ridden. She attacked the speech model for being big, and stated that it's less accurate on minorities. She failed to mention that in AI, the first steps are often big, this paves the way for more efficient and accurate models. She also failed to mention ongoing research to eliminate the very inaccuracies she called out, and in general had a very negative tone.
I believe she knew that her paper is incomplete, which is why she did not expect it to be approved and hence - fully knowing the rules - went ahead and submitted it as an attention seeking behavior.
I personally believe Jeff and Megan are passionate, intelligent and dedicated people. It feels heart breaking that someone could attack them unnecessarily to carry on their agenda.
This incident is clearly not about discrimination, despite Gebru being blank and woman. In fact she is taking advantage of that fact.
Her actions - whether intentionally or unintentionally - creates a bad stereotype for the very group she claims to work for.
I believe Megan took the correct call in firing her.
Google : 'ok leave'
Again, you will need to provide her letter and cite the exact california law if you think you have a case here
I’ll wait