A woman suffering from sexual harassment at a Google-related company announces an accusation statement seeking system reform

DeepMind, a sister company of Google, is an artificial intelligence development company that is announcing high-performance AI such as automatic programming AI ' AlphaCode ' and super-powerful board game AI ' AlphaZero ' one after another. A woman who was enrolled in DeepMind has accused her boss of sexual damage and is asking her parent company Alphabet to reform the system.

Open letter to DeepMinders and all Alphabet employees | by ConcernedDeepMinder | Mar, 2022 | Medium
https://medium.com/@concerneddeepminder/96d1a20bdb15

The victim was sexually harassed by her boss for several months while at DeepMind, according to accusations directed at all DeepMind and Alphabet employees. The woman reported her boss's sexual harassment to the personnel department, but it took nearly a year to resolve the issue, despite clear evidence.

The woman pointed out that there were problems with the response of the personnel department, such as 'ignoring the claim', 'not updating the information for weeks to months', and 'not getting an answer to the inquiry'. Also, although the boss in question was finally dismissed, the fact that the boss was not immediately suspended even if the woman reported the damage and that the boss was promoted before the problem was resolved is unacceptable. It is listed as.

Employees who were damaged by sexual harassment and bullying existed in addition to women, and even in those cases, the personnel department tended to protect high-ranking employees. However, those cases cannot be detailed by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

The woman who wrote the accusation is concerned about the slow response by the personnel department and the existence of NDA, and is requesting Alphabet to reform the following system.

・ Set the deadline for grievance processing within 2 weeks and never exceed 2 months
・ Abolish NDA for harassment victims
・ Proceed with grievance processing with the safety of the victim first
・ Conduct external audits once or twice a year to evaluate fairness
・ Publicize the audit results together with the number of complaints and discuss them in an open place within the company.
・ Development of a mechanism to report problems anonymously

The woman informed the officers of the above, but said that no noticeable reforms were implemented even after more than a year. For this reason, the accusation statement was released in anticipation of external pressure.