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Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

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Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#61

Post by jonathankoren »

jariel wrote: post #38
techbusters wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still a civil way to accept a resignation, with proper timelines and transfer of responsibilities. She offered to resign in some time due to some demands, and the immediate termination seems to be related to an email unrelated to those demands. This sounds a lot like a sleazy move by Google to couch an immediate firing as a resignation.

Google did the right thing and they were civil. She made some pretty serious demands, not having been met, with such politicization there's no reasonable way to accommodate a longer handoff, and she knew that. Waaay too much risk there. She set her own terms, they accepted, that's it. She should have been more transparent in this, because in her Tweets she wasn't forthcoming that it was her terms. There are a ton of…

Do we even know what her demands were? I haven’t seen them posted anywhere. That said, it’s not behooven on either party to be transparent — to the public, or even other employees — because that’s just lawsuit bait.

All we know is that she gave a hardball ultimatum, and Google accepted option 2. I don’t know enough about what’s going on, but if you say “Do this, or I quit,” you have to be prepared for them to show you the door immediately. That’s how at-will employment works.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#62

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway_33455 wrote: post #30

She is being very selective with the information she is choosing to release. She made demands to Google which they did not accept, but she does not specify what those demands were. She also says that she doesn't have a copy of the post she made to the "Brain women and allies", but she doesn't summarize it either, and given her position, I imagine she could get a copy from someone else in the group if she cared to. I'…

[deleted]

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#63

Post by throwaway-kmc »

veridies wrote: post #48
throwaway-kmc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you describe what happened? LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. He was then excoriated as a racist by this woman and the Twitter mobs she incited, to the point where this Turing Award winner is no longer willing to engage with the public via that medium. LeCunn made repeated attempts to explain h…

I'd never heard of this fight before, so I just looked it up. My interpretation is that he made that claim, Gebru responded by claiming that that was an overly reductionist view of things (given, presumably, the fact that biased assumptions could affect the coded assumptions as well as the training data), he maintained his opinion, and she felt frustrated that she didn't feel she was being listened to. I did not see…

Here’s a good summary: https://www.google.com/amp/s/syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yan...

I think it’s clear Gebru was acting in bad faith and LeCunn was baffled and trying to deescalate. Gebru responds to each attempt to deescalate by a reply designed to further rile up Twitter, without actually talking to any of the points LeCunn makes. Virtually all of her replies are some variant of “you are wrong, but I won’t say why” and “listen to me because I am Black”.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#64

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

veridies wrote: post #48
throwaway-kmc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you describe what happened? LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. He was then excoriated as a racist by this woman and the Twitter mobs she incited, to the point where this Turing Award winner is no longer willing to engage with the public via that medium. LeCunn made repeated attempts to explain h…

I'd never heard of this fight before, so I just looked it up. My interpretation is that he made that claim, Gebru responded by claiming that that was an overly reductionist view of things (given, presumably, the fact that biased assumptions could affect the coded assumptions as well as the training data), he maintained his opinion, and she felt frustrated that she didn't feel she was being listened to. I did not see…

In Gebru's final thread on the topic (https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1276326634195259392), she lectured LeCun how to give a proper apology, stated that he was engaging in "pattern of marginalization" causing "incredible harm", and instructed him to educate himself and listen to Black and Brown people before speaking to her again.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#65

Post by throwaway-kmc »

astrange wrote: post #45
throwaway-kmc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you describe what happened? LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. He was then excoriated as a racist by this woman and the Twitter mobs she incited, to the point where this Turing Award winner is no longer willing to engage with the public via that medium. LeCunn made repeated attempts to explain h…

> LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. But this claim is certainly not necessarily correct, and he shouldn't have been so confident about it. Any part of a system can contribute to bias and that includes the model design, not just the data. If they want the system to work then they need to actually demonstr…

I think it is reasonable for one of the founders and most highly respected members of the field to make confident claims about something that is as open and shut as this. The paper in question was training a network to upres faces. The researchers trained it on a dataset containing primarily White faces and released it on GitHub for reproducibility. Subsequent people used it on Black faces and found it make them white.

This is not surprising. Black faces and White faces are not the same data manifold. This is like training a network to upsample oranges, then running it on an apple and being surprised when the result is an unusual color and texture for an apple.

I’m not sure what else there is possibly wrong here. Is the width of their convolutions racist? Their choice to work on super resolution? The fact that they released their work for reproducibility?

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#66

Post by tolbish »

spicyramen wrote: post #60
cyrus20 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both full time SWEs. The gap exists, you can ask around. It's widely known at Google.

Fake news, I'm underrepresented and I never felt like one, I hate playing the minority card and I just focus on being a top performer. Some teams at Google cry all day specially non-eng folks playing the minority card because their work can't be quantified. So they mix up their lack of skills with race BS. I was a SWE and was actually pay very fairly for the work I did, that was my presentation card.

> I'm underrepresented and I never felt like one

What does this mean? That you don't feel like the race you actually are because you don't play the race card?

I hope I misread that and there is a more charitable explanation.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#67

Post by jonathankoren »

_y5hn wrote: post #42
unishark wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd call it petty more than sleazy. Drama queens on both sides.

Threat of resignation is not a resignation. Either they follow due termination process, or she might still be employed or have good legal case.

Unless she has a bespoke employment agreement, it probably says that employment is “at-will” and can be terminated by either party without notice.
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