Google dismisses Margaret Mitchell

Google dismissed Margaret Mitchell, co-founder and co-lead of its Ethical AI team, ten weeks after her co-lead Timnit Gebru left the company in a dispute over a paper on the risks of large language models. Google had locked Mitchell out of her corporate accounts in January 2021 and said an investigation had found “multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.”

Mitchell had used automated scripts to search her own email for material documenting Gebru’s treatment, and had publicly criticised Google’s handling of Gebru’s exit — including a message to the company’s press team calling it evidence of “racism and sexism” — before her access was cut. In a statement following her dismissal, Mitchell said she had tried “to use my position to raise concerns to Google about race and gender inequity, and to speak up about Google’s deeply problematic firing of Dr. Gebru,” and hoped speaking out would advance ethical AI practice.

Google announced Marian Croak as its new head of responsible AI the same day, alongside new diversity and inclusion commitments, but did not release the findings of its internal review.

The dismissal was widely read, inside and outside Google, as confirmation that the Gebru episode was not an isolated management dispute but a structural conflict between a corporate AI lab and researchers publishing findings the company found inconvenient — Mitchell was a co-author, with Gebru, of the “Stochastic Parrots” paper whose suppression had triggered Gebru’s exit and which was formally presented the following month. Both went on to found or join independent AI research institutes rather than return to industry labs.