> In short, she was getting paid handsomely while calling out her bosses by name and taking them through the dirt
I think their job was just that: call out the company (and others) on AI ethics issues - I don't see how it comes as a surprise to you that a person in such a role is also concerned about ethics in general, or the ethics of AI ethics at Google, so to speak.
The way I see it, so much about this hassle seems to point towards some fundamental misunderstanding about what their job was - that perhaps they believed, like you say, that their job was to call out the company and others on AI ethics issues, but that the management who formed and funded that team believed that their job was something else - I think that what Google wanted from that team was to do research on applied methods on how to make the models less biased and on process improvements on how to deploy them in a more ethical manner - i.e. to work on technical solutions to mitigate the ethical problems they identify, to enable Google to achieve the same goals through ML but with less ethical "side-effects" so to speak.
For a specific example, I presume Google would be happy if the team produced methods that help facial recognition generalize better to different ethnic groups, or methods that identify what specific gaps in training data should be filled to cover a diverse target audience; but apparently did not consider highlighting problems where the only solution is "don't deploy such models" and social activism goals as their intended job.
So when the push came to shove, this misalignment of goals had to be addressed; either by one or another changing their goals (which seems to have been unacceptable for both Google and Timnit&co) or by firing/quitting.
The unit was full of Academic researchers, who regularly published papers and collaborated with others on papers; the whole kerfuffle started with Google's uncharacteristic request to put a lid on Dr. Timnit Gebru's paper. To me, that doesn't sound like a team that expects, or is expected to just work quietly on internal - likely confidential - projects.
I suspect Google leadership were on board, and wasn't even aware of the misalignment until Dr. Gebru declined to pull a paper that raised questions on a crown-jewels-level, Jeff-Dean-supported AI model that materially impacts Google's finances (and likely some leaders' bonuses too).
Now that Google leadership is aware of the misalignment, I think its actions show the direction they are taking going forward.
Her call outs had nothing to do with AI ethics, though, and centered almost entirely on alleged perceived sexism, racism, shady HR practices with a sprinkle of political correctness on top, with regards to her colleagues firing.
She started slandering her employer on Twitter in front of the whole world, when that conversation should CLEARLY have been private, and she got fired for it.
> “After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were 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.”
I assume this was to release to the press to shame/pressure Google, and wasn't corporate espionage. But what reason do you think she was doing it for?
Dr Gebru was talking with a lawyer before they fired her. Mitchell was likely contributing to the case because she herself was experiencing retaliation from Google. At this point it doesn’t really matter if it goes to the press or ends up in a complaint—- Google’s retaliation here is illegal. You can’t reproach an employee for simply talking to a lawyer and that’s exactly what Jeff Dean and co did.
I think their job was just that: call out the company (and others) on AI ethics issues - I don't see how it comes as a surprise to you that a person in such a role is also concerned about ethics in general, or the ethics of AI ethics at Google, so to speak.