Fei-Fei Li, Google’s AI maven, returns to academia
In early June, Google retreated from a Pentagon cloud contract following employee protests
San Francisco — Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist at Google’s cloud-computing division, is leaving after controversy over the use of the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology and a deal with the Pentagon. Li, a venerated researcher in the field of AI, is returning to Stanford University, where she was a professor before joining Google about two years ago. Andrew Moore, dean of the school of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh will become head of AI at Google Cloud at the end of 2018, the Alphabet company said on Monday. Moore worked at Google from 2006 to 2014. In early June, Google retreated from a Pentagon cloud contract following employee protests. The programme, called Project Maven, used Google’s AI-powered image-recognition software. In internal e-mails, Li praised the contract but cautioned colleagues to avoid mentioning the AI component of the deal for fear that the public would latch onto concern about "weaponised" AI. "This is red meat to the...
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