Google Paper Cites Research at Center of Its Staff Firestorm

Google in 2020 and 2021 dismissed the two co-heads of its artificial intelligence ethics team in a dispute over research that was critical of the company’s work. Now, Google Research has published another paper on the same topic that cites the original work that led to the removal of the two leaders, Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell.

The company dismissed Gebru—she says she was fired, while Google says she resigned—in late 2020 after she refused to either retract the paper or remove the names of the Google authors. Jeff Dean, the senior vice president of Google AI, later said in an email he shared publicly that the original paper “didn’t meet our bar for publication” and “ignored too much relevant research.” The episode stirred up a sustained controversy at the company's research division, a key area of investment for the tech giant.

Mitchell remained at Google a few months longer until she was fired, and the paper was published with her name styled as “Shmargaret Shmitchell.” The citation in Google Research’s recent paper, shared on Twitter Monday by Dean, retains the Shmitchell nom de plume.