What future for ethical AI after Google scientist firing?

The firing of a prominent scholar and advocate for Black women in tech has raised questions about the sector's commitment to independent ethical AI research. The incident has raised questions about Google's commitment to independent ethical AI research, as accusations of bias in algorithims and the ethics of facial recognition systems are increasingly coming to the fore.
"This episode has cast a pall over what we can say, or how it will be received," said Alex Hanna, a researcher on the Google AI Ethics team who studies potential bias in data informing computer vision in technology such as facial recognition and self-driving cars.  
According to an October study by Harvard Medical School and the University of Toronto, more than half of AI-tenured faculty at four major U.S. universities were receiving funds from from just a handful of tech companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, and Google.  "Dr Gebru's firing is provoking serious questions about to what extent is the business-side informing the ethical AI research being done at Google," Alkhatib said. Several AI scholars and researchers have voiced similar concerns.  
Ameet Rahane, a U.C. Berkeley graduate who studies computational neuroscience, said he'd long hoped to be offered a job at Google to work on AI after he finished a PhD.    "Now ... I would need to think long and hard before accepting it," he said.