Google offered a professor $60,000

Luke Stark asked for money from Google in November and was not aware that he would be denying the payment now. Stark, an assistant professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada, studies the social and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence applied for a Google research scholar award. This is the no-strings-attached research grant up to $ 60000 to support the professors who are in the starting stage of research.

He said that he applied for this award because he believed that the company was building a really strong, potentially industry-leading ethical Al team. But this image changed soon after Timnit Gebru quit her job. She is the co-leader of Google‘s ethical Al team and a black woman in the mostly white male field.

Gebru tweeted that she was fired due to an email she sent. The email contained information about the lack of diversity at the company and frustration over an internal process related to the review of a then-unpublished research paper about the risks of building ever-larger AI language models. This kind of AI is important to Google‘s enormous search business.

Gebru said Google AI leadership asked her to retract the paper from consideration for presentation at a conference. They offered another choice to remove her name from it. The company accepted Her resignation over a list of demands she had sent via email that needed to be met for her to continue working at the company.

Google sent the professor a congratulatory note and told about the company’s plan to offer him $60,000 for his proposal for a research project that would look at how companies are rolling out AI that is used to detect emotions. Stark felt like rejecting the proposal.