Lawsuit by Former Google AI Engineer Proceeds
Google’s attempt to have a lawsuit dismissed has been unsuccessful, as an engineer alleges that he was terminated for questioning a paper published by the company, which promoted the use of artificial intelligence to enhance the efficiency of computer chip design.
In a preliminary ruling issued Wednesday, a California state judge rejected a request by a unit of Alphabet Inc. to throw out Satrajit Chatterjee’s wrongful termination and whistleblower protection claims. Chatterjee is at least the third researcher who has been ousted by Google after being bullied by the company over its use of artificial intelligence.
Before Chatterjee was fired in March 2022, he was a senior engineering manager responsible for evaluating a chip design initiative called Project Morpheus.
His dispute with Google followed the publication of a scientific paper in the journal Nature in April 2020, which claimed that the company’s artificial intelligence programs could design computer chips faster than humans.
Chatterjee and his team conducted further research, which he claims convinced him that Google’s paper misrepresented the capabilities of the company’s proprietary technology.
After presenting his findings to Google executives, he was fired “because he allegedly threatened to disclose his suspected fraud to the CEO and board of directors,” according to a summary of the court complaint.
In his ruling, San Jose Superior Court Judge Frederick Chung said Chatterjee sufficiently supported his claim that Google terminated him in retaliation for refusing to participate in an act that violated state or federal law.
Google argued that Chatterjee’s allegations and reports of fraud are academic disputes and “disagreement among scientists about a better way to design computer chips”, making them an internal matter.
“However, this argument requires that internal personnel matters and disclosure of suspected or actual illegal activity are always mutually exclusive,” Chung wrote.
Chatterjee alleges that Google tried to deceive shareholders and the public by hyping its AI research.
The court’s website says Google can challenge the preliminary ruling at a hearing on Thursday before the judge issues a final ruling. Google previously dismissed other lawsuits in the case.
Google did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
The case is Chatterjee v. Google LLC, 22CV398683, California Superior Court, Santa Clara County (San Jose).
