Democrats in the Senate have called on Google, and its parent company Alphabet, to conduct an internal audit on racial equity. The goal of the requested audit, according to Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.), would be to investigate how Google and its products may perpetuate racial bias.
“We are concerned about repeated instances where Alphabet missed the mark and did not proactively ensure its products and workplaces were safe for Black people,” they wrote in letters to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and others.
The release of two women from Google’s Ethical Artificial Intelligence research team, who were working on resolving how their company’s products carry human biases inherent in their programming, elicited the call for investigation by Senate Democrats. It is rare for the Senate to ask for a company to conduct a particular audit.
TheGrio, a website focused on news for Black Americans, pointed to a Vice study that noted a new dermatology app designed by Google doesn’t recognize people with darker skin tones. According to the report, researchers used a training dataset of 64,837 images of more than 12,000 patients, but only 3.5 percent of those were of people with darker skin tones.
Color of Change, an influential civil rights group active on tech issues, sent a separate letter to Google in April calling on the company to let independent auditors review the company’s civil rights and racial equity practices. The group, which was a driving force in the push to get Facebook to commit to conducting a civil rights audit in 2018, said it was concerned about the spread of white nationalist and extremist content on Google products like YouTube, among other issues, Politico reported. Facebook underwent a similar civil rights and racial equity audit in 2020 after civil rights groups and lawmakers called for a review of whether or not their policies sufficiently addressed racial discrimination and voter suppression.
The increasing influence of politics and corporate activism on corporate practices and behavior could put pressure on internal auditors to be more attuned to social issues. While it’s not expected that the Senate will make a habit of actively calling on individual companies to conduct specific internal audits, it is likely social issues and racial equity will remain high priorities for many stakeholders. 