A tale of two tech titans, an industry rife with bias and the Black women bearing the brunt of the burden

Timnit Gebru, the now former co-leader of Google’s Ethical A.I. team, tweeted that she was fired this week in retaliation for an email she sent to colleagues about gender and racial discrimination at the search behemoth.

Timnit Gebru

Gebru said she sent the email after Google told her to retract a research paper she had co-authored about the bias inherent in current artificial intelligence technology, an area the company has staked much of its future on.

The company appears to be disputing Gebru’s assertion that she was terminated, with their senior vice president of AI tweeting, “I understand the concern over Timnit’s resignation from Google.”

More than 1,200 Googlers signed a letter published Thursday denouncing Gebru’s ouster and describing Google’s actions as censorship and discrimination. The hashtags #BelieveBlackWomen and #ISupportTimnit popped up ,with well-known names in tech tweeting their support.

Among those weighing in was ex-Pinterest employee Ifeoma Ozoma, who, along with Aerica Shimizu Banks, helped spur a new shareholder lawsuit against the popular image-sharing company for allegedly fostering a culture of discrimination. “Vicious targeting shouldn’t be the consequence for being an accomplished, outspoken Black woman in tech, and yet…#ISupportTimnit,” Ozoma tweeted.

Further fueling the latest suit against Pinterest is a pending gender bias suit filed by the company’s former COO, Francoise Brougher, in August, a few months after Ozoma and Shimizu Banks left the company and made their allegations of discrimination public. [The image above is an illustration of (from left) Ozoma, Shimizu Banks and Brougher created by the campaign “Change at Pinterest.”]

This week’s news that the nonprofit All Raise, which is dedicated to furthering gender equality in tech, raised $11 million is all the more welcome given the levels of gender and racial bias increasingly coming to light in the industry.