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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#91

Post by Tycho »

mcphage wrote: post #73
Tycho wrote: post #27

Title here is misleading (probably deliberate). The email that got this person “fired” was one that allegedly contained an ultimatum and a threat to resign. The employer then called her bluff and accepted her resignation with immediate effect.

> contained an ultimatum and a threat to resign. The employer then called her bluff and accepted her resignation A threat to resign isn't the same thing as resigning. And it seems you don't think so, either, since you characterize her threat as a bluff. It can't be both a bluff and a resignation.

It's the ultimatum part that makes the difference.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#92

Post by whymauri »

KentLane wrote: post #57
silisili wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that Lecun argument was a really bad first impression of her from me. I guess she found out life isn't Twitter and you can't just go around telling everyone they are bad and wrong without consequences.

She will land on her feet. There is a huge demand for ideologues willing to lobotomize ML. “Let’s generate fake data with GANs to prevent our AI from discovering politically uncomfortable regularities!” It’s ugly work but someone has to do it, right?

This is a rude dismissal of an entire field within machine learning and statistics (ethics, bias, and robustness).

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#95

Post by tinyhouse »

Good for Google. I don't know anything about her, but her debate with Lecun on Twitter was enough for me to know she is toxic. I don't care how good of a researcher she is. The fact they fired her given the current climate shows they actually have balls. I had no idea...

I read her email. You know what's crazy about it? she is talking about Google silencing marginalized voices. She keeps referring to herself as a marginalized voice in the research community! She has a PhD from Stanford, working at one the best places in the world for AI researchers, and she gets more attention than almost any other researcher I know of (she earned it of course). Wake up woman. You're a privileged researcher! If I were making the comments she made to Lecun, no one would even bother to listen, yet alone Lecun actually respond and eventually leave twitter because of that. Give me a break. There's not even one sentence in her email about what is actually the content of her paper that is so controversial. It's just a rant about nothing. Welcome to the real world, companies have policies and once you join them you lose your freedom to do whatever the heck you want. You can go back to academia but no one would pay you what you've been making at Google Research.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#96

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

greatjack613 wrote: post #48

Unrelated, but hiring by race or gender is inherently racist. We should hire by skill alone whether the person is a Lesbian Black Female, or a White Male

I would have just down-voted this, but I hate it when people do that to me rather than actually respond.

In this case, I'm not going to respond in much detail, other than to note that there are 30+ years of writings about affirmative action which get deeply into this issue. Your summary of it is misleading and incomplete.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#97

Post by dnautics »

ardy42 wrote: post #15
nickff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions have historically been some of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in the USA.

> Unions have historically been some of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in the USA. The USA has been pretty racist in discriminatory, and I think it's disingenuous to single out unions for that history. I mean, who instituted Jim Crow and profited from slavery? White voters, government officials, and private enterprise. Unions were definitely not leading that.

That history is not entirely correct. Typically private enterprise has been against segregation: Think about it, it is pretty expensive to have to maintain two sets of facilities for society. The montgomery bus company was AGAINST segregation when the laws forcing bus segregation were passed. Barry Goldwater donated a ton of money in the early days first NAACP chapter in Arizona in part because segregating his department store would be expensive for operations.

As for Unions, think about it, their major threat is cheap labor from abroad, so the way that they have historically been discriminatory has been in lobbying for anti-immigration and immigration quota (don't know if they still do that as much).

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#98

Post by bwestergard »

nickff wrote: post #10
tehjoker wrote: post #5

Corporations and their managers care only about making money and maintaining good vibes to produce a positive business environment. Only unions engaging in strikes and outside pressure can force them to change materially. All these internal committees and such are just PR. By the way, that part about unions and strikes also applies to the joined at the hip government as well.

Unions have historically been some of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in the USA.

"Unions have historically been some of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in the USA."

You're telling much less than half the story, and taking the latter half of the twentieth century in isolation without considering what came before.

U.S. unions with communist and socialist leadership were universally anti-racist in word and very often in deed. Employers often interfered with employee choice of leadership to the benefit of conservative, racist, union leaders as opposed to leftists with anti-racist commitments.

In one of the most flagrant violations of the First Amendment in U.S. history, the Taft-Hartley Act[1] criminalized membership in all manner of left-wing political organization. With the cooperation of union leaders ready to sell out their membership, many of the strongest voices for integration were purged.

Employers and union officials alike had relationships ranging from extortion to open cooperation with organized crime. The relationship between the Hoffa Sr's Teamsters and the mafia was complex, and notorious in part because it was so exceptional.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act#Anti-...

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#99

Post by colinmhayes »

greatjack613 wrote: post #48

Unrelated, but hiring by race or gender is inherently racist. We should hire by skill alone whether the person is a Lesbian Black Female, or a White Male

Having a diverse workforce is very valuable. The paradigm shifts that can come from voices of different backgrounds are invaluable. Can those growing up under racism be considered a skill? seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but it can definitely benefit the employer.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#100

Post by draw_down »

I feel like if you say you're going to quit unless some conditions are met, you're explicitly accepting the possibility of going out the door. That is, you can't employ this only rhetorically, it doesn't work that way. I don't know what the conditions were, and in a lot of ways there is important information being tactically withheld here, so it's hard to say for certain.

But generally, unless you yourself are really really important to the company, you should prepare for it not to go your way. And it's going to be rare in a huge place like Google, with tons of people they could put in your place, for a person to be that important. Maybe this person is, I'm unfamiliar. But as far as I can see this doesn't seem outrageous on Google's part.

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