OAKLAND, California (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s Google on Thursday named Marian Croak, one of its few black executives, to oversee responsible artificial intelligence (AI) research following weeks of internal anger over the dismissal of a prominent black man scientist.
Google has confirmed that Croak will manage ten teams, including a dozen scientists studying the ethical considerations of automated technologies known as AI. Timnit Gebru, co-head of Ethical AI, said in December that Google had suddenly fired her for contesting the company’s orders.
Employees for weeks expressed concern that Gebru’s criticism of Google had led to unfair punishment, and Croak was among executives trying to mediate a way forward between staff and management.
Croak, a vice president of engineering who will report Jeff Dean to Google AI chief, told employees at a Thursday meeting that she respects Gebru and that it happened to her sorry.
In a video on Google’s blog, she also admitted that the disagreement in the research areas is now within her scope. “There’s a lot of conflict in the field right now, and it can sometimes polarize, and what I like to do is have people have the conversation in a more diplomatic way,” she said.
Google employee Alex Hanna on Twitter called the news about Croak ‘a betrayal’ and said it took place behind the back of the Ethical AI team and did not address the demands the team made after Gebru’s firing.
Gebru said in a statement: “Marian is a very capable scientist that I admired and even trusted. It is incredibly painful to see her legitimize what Jeff Dean and his subordinates have done to me and my team.”
Croak, who previously worked on the reliability of sites for Google, will also oversee teams conducting research on accessibility, social good and fairness in health algorithms.
Reporting by Paresh Dave and Jeffrey Dastin; Edited by Christopher Cushing