Google is changing its paper review process following internal revolt

Google is making changes to how it reviews papers following an internal revolt over the company’s controversial practices.

Leading AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December last year after sending an email to colleagues which criticised the company’s practices.

Gebru claims Google blocks the publication of papers that may cause criticism of the company’s work; including her most recent which questioned whether language models can be too...

26 February 2021 | Ethics

‘Information gap’ between AI creators and policymakers needs to be resolved – report

An article posted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) has argued there is a 'huge gap in understanding' between policymakers and AI creators.

The report, authored by Adriana Bora, AI policy researcher and project manager at The Future Society, and David Alexandru Timis, outgoing curator at Brussels Hub, explores how to resolve accountability and trust-building issues with AI technology.

Bora and Timis note there is "a need for sound mechanisms that will generate a...

23 February 2021 | Ethics

Google is leaking AI talent following ethicist’s controversial firing

Some high-profile AI experts have departed Google after the controversial firing of leading ethicist Timnit Gebru.

Gebru was fired from Google after criticising the company’s practices in an email following a dispute over a paper she was told not to publish which questioned whether language models can be too big and whether they can increase prejudice and inequalities. In her email, Gebru also expressed frustration at the lack of progress in hiring women at...

5 February 2021 | Ethics

Google is telling its scientists to give AI a ‘positive’ spin

Google has reportedly been telling its scientists to give AI a “positive” spin in research papers.

Documents obtained by Reuters suggest that, in at least three cases, Google’s researchers were requested to refrain from being critical of AI technology.

A “sensitive topics” review was established by Google earlier this year to catch papers which cast a negative light on AI ahead of their publication.

Google asks its scientists to consult with legal,...

24 December 2020 | Ethics

Google fires ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru after critical email

A leading figure in ethical AI development has been fired by Google after criticising the company.

Timnit Gebru is considered a pioneer in the field and researched the risks and inequalities found in large language models.

Gebru claims she was fired by Google over an unpublished paper and sending an email critical of the company’s practices.

The paper questions whether language models can be too big, who benefits from them, and whether they can increase...

4 December 2020 | Ethics

What happens when Google’s chatty bot chats with a chatbot?

Google Duplex impressed and scared the world in equal parts when it was unveiled, and now we've seen how a conversation goes with another chatbot.

Duplex, for a quick primer, is Google's AI-powered voice bot which can call businesses on a person's behalf for things such as booking hair appointments. It's so realistic that everyone has decided that bots must declare themselves as such before chatting with a human.

A company known as PolyAI – which specialises in...

25 September 2020 | Bots

Google returns to using human YouTube moderators after AI errors

Google is returning to using humans for YouTube moderation after repeated errors with its AI system.

Moderating a large network like YouTube is no easy task. Aside from the sheer volume of content uploaded every day, moderators are subjected to the worst of humanity and often end up requiring therapy. They're the unsung heroes.

AI has been hailed as helping to deal with some of the aforementioned issues. Either by automating the moderation process entirely or by offering...

21 September 2020 | Adoption

Google’s Model Card Toolkit aims to bring transparency to AI

Google has released a toolkit which it hopes will bring some transparency to AI models.

People are wary of big tech companies like Google. People are also concerned about AI. Combine the two and you've got a general distrust which can hinder important advancements.

Model Card Toolkit aims to step in and facilitate AI model transparency reporting for developers, regulators, and downstream...

30 July 2020 | Adoption

NVIDIA’s AI-focused Ampere GPUs are now available in Google Cloud

Google Cloud users can now harness the power of NVIDIA’s Ampere GPUs for their AI workloads.

The specific GPU added to Google Cloud is the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core which was announced just last month. NVIDIA says the A100 “has come to the cloud faster than any NVIDIA GPU in history.”

NVIDIA claims the A100 boosts training and inference performance by up to 20x over its predecessors. Large AI models like BERT can be trained in just 37 minutes on a cluster of 1,024...

8 July 2020 | Cloud

Google pledges to no longer build AIs for the fossil fuel industry

Google has pledged to no longer build AIs for the fossil fuel industry as it further distances itself from controversial developments.

A report from Greenpeace earlier this month exposed Google as being one of the top three developers of AI tools for the fossil fuel industry. Greenpeace found AI technologies boost production levels by as much as five percent.

In an interview with CUBE’s John Furrier, the leader of Google’s CTO office, Will Grannis, said that Google...

22 May 2020 | Energy