Ex-Amazon AI exec claims she was asked to ignore IP law
This is really appalling stuff, on two counts: (a) how does it not surprise me that maternity leave was considered “weak” and grounds for firing. (b) check this shit out:
According to Ghaderi’s account in the complaint, she returned to work after giving birth in January 2023, inheriting a large language model project. Part of her role was flagging violations of Amazon’s internal copyright policies and escalating these concerns to the in-house legal team. In March 2023, the filing claims, her team director, Andrey Styskin, challenged Ghaderi to understand why Amazon was not meeting its goals on Alexa search quality. The filing alleges she met with a representative from the legal department to explain her concerns and the tension they posed with the “direction she had received from upper management, which advised her to violate the direction from legal.” According to the complaint, Styskin rejected Ghaderi’s concerns, allegedly telling her to ignore copyright policies to improve the results. Referring to rival AI companies, the filing alleges he said: “Everyone else is doing it.”
Move fast and break laws!(tags: aws amazon llms alexa maternity-leave parenting parental-leave work dont-be-evil copyright ip ai)