There Is Still Room For Improvement For Google Regarding AI, Content Moderation, And Ads, According To A Civil-Rights Audit

Alphabet Inc. has disclosed the findings of a civil rights audit in response to shareholder pressure to investigate how Google's rules and practices influence equity within the firm and among its products.

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The audit urges the tech giant to do more in light of Google's GOOG, -0.62% GOOGL, -0.64% enormous reach and influence as the leading search engine in the world. The main suggestion: in addition to what the company's head of civil rights, head of human rights, and chief program director and their teams are already doing, "a civil rights infrastructure sufficiently scaled to reach across Google's varied work and initiatives," including "in critical areas like AI, content moderation, and ads.

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The following suggestions are included in the study, which was completed by the Washington, D.C.-based law firm WilmerHale and published Friday:

• Establishing fair recruiting processes required since, according to the law firm, prescribed "best practices" are used inconsistently throughout the organization.

• Updating YouTube's policy to forbid deadnaming, which is the practice of referring to transgender or nonbinary individuals by their old names.

• Expanding the scope of equity assessments for policy across all product categories and formalizing feedback on content-moderation policies from internal civil rights and equity specialists.

• Establishing additional metrics to monitor how fast and effectively the business takes down ads that include false information about the upcoming election.

• Assuring "strong product-area expertise" and the ability to "expand their work across the organization" for the "central teams entrusted with ensuring compliance with the [company's stated] AI Principles and any AI legislation and directives."

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WilmerHale claimed that it started its audit in September and complied with Google's and parent organization Alphabet's request to examine "critical product areas and practices" by speaking with more than 200 Google employees from a variety of teams and functions and by examining "extensive" written materials, such as internal policies and reports.

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Even though the audit plan last year was supported by the majority of non-insider shares, it was defeated. According to the article, Google willingly consented to the audit, but in its proxy statement, the corporation advised investors to vote against by the shareholder petition that requested the audit.

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The audit took place "after 64% of non-inside shareholders felt this was an essential thing," according to Laura Campos, the director of political and corporate responsibility at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which presented the resolution for the audit.

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Although Campos expressed satisfaction with the audit's coverage of a wide range of subjects, she noted that "all of the criticism [in the audit] felt very, extremely subdued given the sort of controversies the corporation has experienced surrounding a whole spectrum of civil-rights issues."

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One such controversy involved the departure in 2020 of Timnit Gebru, a Black woman and a.i. researcher, after she voiced concerns about diversity issues at the organization and published a study on the dangers of huge language models. Although Gebru received support from thousands of individuals, the audit failed to highlight the high-profile controversy.

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Another instance is when the auditors claimed to have gotten input from "about a dozen organizations that represent civil rights and external stakeholders," which according to Campos is a small amount and it is unclear how the groups were picked or who they were.

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Both Google and WilmerHale declined MarketWatch's Monday request for the names of the civil rights groups, though they did supply additional statements.

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According to a Google spokeswoman, the business would "over the coming months" utilize the audit's results to guide its products and policy goals. A timetable for the audit's recommendations was not mentioned.

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The head of civil rights at Google, Chanelle Hardy, stated in a statement, "We are committed to always improving, and that include efforts to better our approach to civil and human rights.

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"Google realizes that its principles and commitments demand vigilance and creativity, and this audit will allow the company to make more progress on this path," said Debo Adegbile, chair of WilmerHale's antidiscrimination practice, in a statement.

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Additionally, Campos stated that past civil rights audits had been "more scathing" of IT firms. For instance, the Facebook META, 0.64% in 2020 civil rights audit, which drew on conversations with much more than 100 civil rights groups, stated that the social media giant's choice to leave some of the former President Donald Trump's posts up was a "major setback for civil rights."

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Although his organization was not directly engaged with the Google audit, Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, a human rights advocacy organization that has advocated for such audits at other tech giants, including Facebook, said he anticipates working with the organization.

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“Ultimately, the civil rights review will measure Google's commitment to racial justice by its willingness to carry out the recommendations,” he said.