The firing of researcher Timnit Gebru from Google teaches an unexpected lesson about women and power
By: Polina Kroik
Tags: Women In Tech, Google, Technology, Culture, Artificial Intelligence

The firing of researcher Timnit Gebru from Google teaches an unexpected lesson about women and power Polina Kroik Follow Dec 23 · 4 min read

Photo by TechCrunch. Timnit Gebru was dismissed from Google for voicing criticism of its practices and policies.

When I first heard that a Black woman researcher was fired by Google for criticizing the company, it sounded like the same old story. As Gebru herself suggested in an interview to NPR, male-dominated organizations are sometimes willing to appoint women to prominent roles — just as long as those women remain more-or-less silent, affirming the company line.

But as the events unfolded over the following weeks, and as I learned more about Gebru herself I reached another conclusion. Though the dismissal was an obvious attempt to silence a critical voice, and very likely an instance of racial and gender discrimination, this age-old oppressor’s strategy wasn’t successful. In fact, instead of silencing Gebru’s voice, Google’s move ended up amplifying it — attracting global media attention to the company’s discriminatory practices, protests from employees, and most recently a petition calling for the researcher’s reinstatement.

This may sound like a David and Goliath story — an Ethiopia immigrant with academic credentials taking on a tech giant. But the story unfolded in this way precisely because Gebru, despite her humble beginnings, isn’t exactly a David. In fact, she is a highly accomplished Stanford-educated scholar, who has gained recognition for revealing the racism inherent in AI algorithms. The research essay that sparked her dispute with Google took the company to task over a number of environmental and cultural failings of its so-called “large language models” — apparently one of the Google’s major undertakings.

The email that Gebru subsequently sent to some of her Google colleagues on an internal listserv speaks to her social and cultural status. Written in a confident, though exasperated, voice, contrasts the steps Google has taken to dismiss her research with the peer-review process established in academe:

Have you ever heard of someone getting “feedback” on a paper through a privileged and confidential document to HR? Does that sound like a standard procedure to you or does it just happen to people like me who are constantly dehumanized? Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from PR & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from PR & Policy besides them asking you for updates (in 2 months).

She goes on to criticize Google for “micro” and “macro” discrimination against women and people of color before admonition her colleagues that their internal criticism is essentially futile:

What I want to say is stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference. The DEI OKRs that we don’t know where they come from (and are never met anyways), the random discussions, the “we need more mentorship” rather than “we need to stop the toxic environments that hinder us from progressing” the constant fighting and education at your cost, they don’t matter. Because there is zero accountability. There is no incentive to hire 39% women: your life gets worse when you start advocating for underrepresented people, you start making the other leaders upset when they don’t want to give you good ratings during calibration.

Even though Gebru laments her powerlessness in the face of Google’s corporate machinery, she in fact speaks from a position of relative power. It is the power of a person who has a voice, cultural standing, social and institutional status outside this particular organization. According to Gebru’s biography, it isn’t a power that she was born with, but rather one she’s accrued through her education and successful career.

Gebru’s status and relative power may be lost on some readers, but they are clearly visible to me because, somewhat like Gebru, I entered a PhD program as a lower-middle-class immigrant and worked hard to gain acceptance, and to accumulate some of the markings of status and prestige that allow me to publish articles and stand in front of a college classroom. However, as a mere adjunct professor with a handful of obscure publications, I would not have been able to call attention to Google’s inequitable practices in the manner she did.

Unlike a rank-and-file employee — or even a rank-and-file researcher — Gebru was able to speak in an effective public voice, reference the practices of academe (on whose support she could rely), and risk losing her employment. More importantly, she was able to attract the media’s attention, and use that attention strategically to put shine a spotlight on inequality.

I’m pointing out these distinctions not to diminish the importance of Gebru’s critique or her courage of speaking out, but rather to emphasize how vital it is for women like Gebru to have a measure of power, and to have institutions that allow women access to such power.

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Gebru’s success story, like most success stories of this sort is an individual one. And as much as it tells us about what women in positions of power can accomplish, it also shows what they cannot. Gebru’s has successfully raised awareness of an injustice, but that injustice likely won’t be rectified anytime soon. For real change to happen — in AI, in Google, in other corporations, and in academia — a much larger shift has to take place, one that goes beyond identity politics.

In the meantime, though, we are clearly much better off with women and minorities in positions of power than without them. Without Gebru and others like her there may be no one to call attention to the racism and sexism that profit-driven AI technologies perpetuate. I hope that Gebru is able to continue working productively in her field and that there’s enough public pressure on Google and other tech giants to hire diverse professionals who will bring a critical perspective to this powerful field.