A Google LLC employee involved with last year’s walkout has left the company, Bloomberg reported today.

The person in question, Meredith Whittaker, was heavily involved in the protest in which Google employees all over the globe took to the streets over the treatment of female employees and the way Google handed sexual misconduct cases.

Whittaker had also been outspoken on issues surrounding the ethics of what Google does with its tech. She was the program manager of Google’s Open Research Group and also co-founder of the AI Now Institute, an organization that focuses on the ethics of how artificial intelligence is used.

One of her main criticisms was Google’s project with the Pentagon to supply artificial intelligence to help identify and flag images for human review from thousands of hours of drone footage taken in Iraq and Syria. Known as “Project Maven,” it was scrapped after considerable pressure from its own employees and other groups.

In April, both Whittaker and another employee, Claire Stapleton, both said they had been treated harshly after their involvement in organizing the walkout. At the time Whittaker said Google had told her that her “role would be changed dramatically” and also said she was told to “abandon her work on AI ethics.” Both employees criticized Google for what they said was a “culture of retaliation” at the company.

In April, Whittaker tweeted that the retaliation wasn’t just about her, or Stapleton. “It’s about silencing dissent and making us afraid to speak honestly about tech and power,” she said. “NOT OK. Now more than ever, it’s time to speak up.”

Whittaker hasn’t yet publicly spoken about her recent decision to leave, although she criticized Google recently. “People in the AI field who know the limitations of this tech, and the shaky foundation on which these grand claims are perched, need to speak up, loudly,” she tweeted on Sunday. “The consequences of this kind of BS marketing are deadly (if profitable for a few).”

On Monday one of her employees, software engineer Chris Lu, tweeted, “Watching her experience as a whistleblower at Google and a victim of retaliation cannot signal good things for how AI institutions will react to negative criticism. #NotOkGoogle.”

Photo: Robbie Shade/Flickr