谷歌執行長桑達爾·皮查伊（Sundar Pichai）週三在給員工的一封電子郵件中談到了備受爭議的人工智慧倫理研究員蒂姆尼特·蓋布魯（Timnit Gebru）離職一事。他寫道：“我們需要為一位傑出的黑人**領導人，她有著巨大的才華，不幸離開了谷歌而承擔責任。”。這封郵件的訊息最早由Axios釋出。

雖然皮查伊沒有說格布魯被解僱，因為她和其他許多人都聲稱，他承諾檢討導致她離開公司的步驟。他寫道：“我們需要評估導致格布魯博士離職的情況，研究我們本可以改進的地方，並領導一個更加尊重的過程。”。

他還為Gebru的離開“導致我們社群的一些人質疑他們在谷歌的地位”道歉，並承諾考慮未來的“降級策略”。

在Twitter上，Gebru寫道，這張紙條遠非道歉。

上週，Gebru在推特上說，公司因為她發給Brain Women and Allians listserv的一封電子郵件而突然解僱了她。在郵件中，她對公司試圖讓她收回一篇關於大型語言處理模型風險的研究論文表示失望。

這封郵件引發了Gebru和googleresearch高層的對話。Gebru要求滿足某些條件，以便她留在公司，包括知道誰要求收回她的論文的細節。其中一位經理梅根·卡喬利亞（Megan Kacholia）表示，公司無法滿足這些條件，並先發制人地接受了格布魯的辭職。

谷歌人工智慧負責人傑夫·迪恩發表了一份說明，解釋了Gebru的論文沒有達到公司標準的原因。他說，該報告是在公司通常需要兩週時間的最後期限前一天提交審查的。

但Gebru自己的團隊對此評價進行了反駁，在一篇部落格文章中寫道，出版物審查政策的實施“不公平和歧視性的”。Verge審查的一項內部分析顯示，大多數出版物批准發生在截止日期之前，41%的批准發生在截止日期之後。研究小組寫道：“許多論文在沒有達到這一‘要求’的情況下被批准發表。”。

12月4日，googlewalkout媒體賬戶釋出了一份**書，**Gebru被解僱。迄今為止，已有超過2300名谷歌員工和3700名行業盟友簽署了該協議。

請閱讀Pichai的完整電子郵件：

Hi everyone,

One of the things I’ve been most proud of this year is how Googlers from across the company came together to address our racial equity commitments. It’s hard, important work, and while we’re steadfast in our commitment to do better, we have a lot to learn and improve. An important piece of this is learning from our experiences like the departure of Dr. Timnit Gebru.

I’ve heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru’s departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google. I want to say how sorry I am for that, and I accept the resp***ibility of working to restore your trust.

First - we need to assess the circumstances that led up to Dr. Gebru’s departure, examining where we could have improved and led a more respectful process. We will begin a review of what happened to identify all the points where we can learn — c***idering everything from de-escalation strategies to new processes we can put in place. Jeff and I have spoken and are fully committed to doing this. One of the best aspects of Google’s engineering culture is our sincere desire to understand where things go wrong and how we can improve.

Second - we need to accept resp***ibility for the fact that a prominent Black, female leader with immense talent left Google unhappily. This loss has had a ripple effect through some of our least represented communities, who saw themselves and some of their experiences reflected in Dr. Gebru’s. It was also keenly felt because Dr. Gebru is an expert in an important area of AI Ethics that we must continue to make progress on — progress that depends on our ability to ask ourselves challenging questi***.

It’s incredibly important to me that our Black, women, and underrepresented Googlers know that we value you and you do belong at Google. And the burden of pushing us to do better should not fall on your shoulders. We started a conversation together earlier this year when we announced a broad set of racial equity commitments to take a fresh look at all of our systems from hiring and leveling, to promotion and retention, and to address the need for leadership accountability across all of these steps. The events of the last week are a painful but important reminder of the progress we still need to make.

This is a top priority for me and Google leads, and I want to recommit to translating the energy that we’ve seen this year into real change as we move forward into 2021 and beyond.

— Sundar