Last Week in AI The firing of Dr.Timnit Gebru, AlphaFold, and Unions Against AI
Dec 10, 2020
The podcast dives into the dismissal of a prominent AI ethics researcher at Google, raising questions about corporate decision-making and transparency. It also celebrates DeepMind's AlphaFold, a groundbreaking advancement in protein folding that promises to revolutionize drug discovery. Additionally, labor unions are highlighted for their efforts to advocate for workers' rights in an AI-dominated landscape, emphasizing the need for ethical deployment and addressing potential inequalities.
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Timnit Gebru's Firing
- Timnit Gebru, a prominent AI ethics researcher, was fired from Google after a disagreement regarding an ethics paper.
- The paper explored biases and environmental costs of large language models, causing friction with Google.
AlphaFold's Impact
- AlphaFold, by Google DeepMind, offers a solution to the 50-year-old protein folding problem.
- Predicting protein shapes aids in understanding their function, potentially impacting disease treatment development.
Google's Attempt to Silence Criticism
- Google's firing of Timnit Gebru appears to be an attempt to silence criticism of their AI technology.
- The review process seemed to block Gebru's paper critical of large language models.