University of Tokyo fired its youngest associate professor due to racist tweet. (Image via tsunagu Japan)

University of Tokyo fires an associate professor over racist tweet

Alfonsus Adi Putra
Social & Life
Educations
Jan 16, 2020
1996
On Wednesday, the University of Tokyo dismissed an associate professor and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher for a series of anti-Chinese comments on Twitter in 2019. The institution said that the associate professor had damaged the University of Tokyo’s reputation and honor.

In April 2019, Osawa, who was still 31, was specially appointed as the associate professor at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies (IIIS)

Between November and December 2019, Osawa tweeted the controversial thread. On his Twitter bio, Osawa boasted himself as the “youngest associate professor” at the University of Tokyo. He further tweeted that Daisy, an AI firm he runs, “will not hire Chinese”. He said that he will dismiss Chinese applicants for Daisy as early as in document screening.

Adhering to capitalism, Osawa said that Chinese workers are of low performance and they deserve to be discriminated against. Not only Chinese but also Osawa made fun of the University of Tokyo by saying that the university is being “controlled by the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party.”

Osawa then apologized for the thread, saying that the “anti-Chinese recruitment policy” was a result of “overlearning” by AI, adapting itself to limited data.

Unrepentant, the associate professor and researcher, Shohei Osawa (32), took it to Twitter that his work termination was “unfair”. Osawa tweeted that the University of Tokyo is wrong in revealing Japan’s AI development to the world, especially Asian regions.

Head of IIIS, Noboru Koshizuka, wrote in a statement that Osawa’s incident must not occur. To prevent it from reoccurring, IIIS will implement some measures, including deepening dialogue between faculty and students and setting up a code of ethics.

Source: https://bit.ly/2FUCgZA

Politics , Education , Scandal , Twitter , Asia , Japan , University-of-Tokyo , China