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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#211

Post by Veen »

aylmao wrote: post #147
high_derivative wrote: post #90

These things seem to play out like clockwork. Progressive companies hire social justice warriors into vague ethics or policy roles, let them hire their activist friends, shower them with fast track careers and promotions. It's good optics, the progressives like it because it makes them feel better about working at big techs. Said hires have thus far, as far as I can tell, not produced anything of substantial value to…

> Progressive companies hire social justice warriors into vague ethics or policy roles... > I think this is all a good thing because it may alert some executives to the price for hiring activists into research roles. Ah, yes. They're going to do their jobs and point out poor ethics and policy in _your_ company. I mean, they were hired for that, but if they could just look down and _pretend_ to care about the space th…

You're right. If companies want guidance in ethics, they should hire ethicists and not activists. Activists have an ideological pre-commitment that, unless they sell out, will always trump allegiance to their employer.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#212

Post by no-dr-onboard »

namesbc wrote: post #184
high_derivative wrote: post #90

These things seem to play out like clockwork. Progressive companies hire social justice warriors into vague ethics or policy roles, let them hire their activist friends, shower them with fast track careers and promotions. It's good optics, the progressives like it because it makes them feel better about working at big techs. Said hires have thus far, as far as I can tell, not produced anything of substantial value to…

As soon as someone uses the phrase "social justice warriors" you know they the rest of the argument isn't going to have any substance.

Its depressingly ironic how intolerant OPs comment is to the conversation.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#213

Post by parliament32 »

aylmao wrote: post #168
idlewords wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one got fired here. Offering to resign was a huge mistake.

> No one got fired here. I mean, from the tweets what I gather is she wasn't planning on leaving just yet. Saying "hey, you want to resign by [X] but we'd rather you be gone so let us inform you've just been resigned as of now" is essentially firing [1]. > Offering to resign was a huge mistake. I think this will be good for her in the long term. I'm sure she'll find another research position, and the alternative was…

From the response, it was more like "I want you to do X otherwise I'll resign", and google said "ok, cya". Curious the author isn't willing to publish the actual email, just the management's response.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#214

Post by effingwewt »

idlewords wrote: post #101
jononor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next two tweets contain more: > However, we believe the end of your employment should happen faster than your email reflects because certain aspects of the email you sent last night to non-management employees in the brain group reflect behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager. > As a result, we are accepting your resignation immediately, effective today. We will send your final pay…

No, this is more like giving two weeks' notice and then being asked to leave the building immediately. It's not pleasant but it also isn't the same as being fired. Google called her bluff here.

I think this isn't nearly so bad as forcing an early termination of two weeks notice.

I had a job pretty recently, was senior tech and was eager to please, which ended up meaning having to take the hard/after hours calls no one else wanted to handle. It also meant I eventually became the only on-call tech for over 4 months straight. This in turn meant I knew the most about all of our accounts, knew the most about their systems, scheduling for jobs as well as subcontractors, I handled it all, right down to installing the CCTV systems at our new location, single handedly.

When I decided I'd had enough of being taken advantage of and being lied to, I gave my two weeks notice.

They assumed I was going to work for a competitor (I wasn't I was taking some much needed personal time), and they fired me on the spot. While walking me out they also informed me that since they had my resignation letter if I tried to claim unemployment they would use it to claim I had resigned. I didn't care as I wasn't in need of unemployment I was just even happier now about leaving. They were rude, talked down to me and belittled me all the way out.

2 hours after I left the calls began 'how do we' 'how does this' 'this job's permits' 'how do we log into'. I politely told them to fuck off. They even went so far as to have other workers call/text me asking the same questions ver batim.

I will never again give 2 weeks notice unless I have in writing they must give me 2 weeks notice upon release for any reason other than something illegal.

This person offered an ultimatum and their employer made a choice. I just don't think its as bad as early termination of 2 weeks notice.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#215

Post by Karunamon »

tkfu wrote: post #149
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

Ok, but how do you do that? It was easy in classical music; they just started doing auditions behind a curtain, without any verbal Q&A, and suddenly a field that used to be dominated by men became pretty much 50/50, and all the people who said that men were better at the highest echelons of musical achievement had to shut up. But tech companies want to talk to the humans they're hiring, so race and gender are (almost…

>There's no equivalent to the curtain to remove the possibility of bias

Other companies have tried. Names and vitals deleted from resumes before any people involved in the hiring process see them, remote interviews conducted over IM or with voice masking. That's one benefit I see with the much-maligned leetcode-style interviews, is that your identity is completely isolated from the process until the very end.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#216

Post by black_puppydog »

curiousllama wrote: post #19
black_puppydog wrote: post #2

I think this is actually the better link to be discussing, rather than the twitter threads shared before. The most relevant parts (in terms of back story) should be this: > A week before you go out on vacation, you see a meeting pop up at 4:30pm PST on your calendar (this popped up at around 2pm). No one would tell you what the meeting was about in advance. Then in that meeting your manager’s manager tells you “it ha…

I really want to read that paper. Can't wait til it's published. Presuming it'll be at FAccT*...

Underrated post. Would be interesting indeed.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#217

Post by ipnon »

I found this particularly telling:

>But now there’s an additional layer saying any privileged person can decide that they don’t want your paper out with zero conversation.

Decisions in megacorporations are made in one direction, from the top on down. If this is her main point of contention, I sympathize but that's what you get for joining one of the largest corporations in the world. It seems both parties will be better off without each other. I hope her research won't suffer for it.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#219

Post by Bukhmanizer »

contemporary343 wrote: post #156
no-dr-onboard wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations by like minded publications hardly constitutes impact. Contrary to what most academics believe, impact isn't measured between the ears of individuals in academia.

Uh, what? She's a researcher and this is a Google research division. A 1000 citations is a large number for any single paper, even in ML. And yes, even inside Google research, this aspect of impact plays a big role in evaluation of researchers.

I work in research, and citation count, especially of a single paper, is such a dumb metric for evaluating performance. There are about a million reasons that one paper gets cited over another that don’t have to do with quality.

Does the same paper get 1000+ citations if it were published in 2010? Or even 2015? Probably not.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#220

Post by black_puppydog »

southstreet wrote: post #132
black_puppydog wrote: post #2

I think this is actually the better link to be discussing, rather than the twitter threads shared before. The most relevant parts (in terms of back story) should be this: > A week before you go out on vacation, you see a meeting pop up at 4:30pm PST on your calendar (this popped up at around 2pm). No one would tell you what the meeting was about in advance. Then in that meeting your manager’s manager tells you “it ha…

"feedback" here seems to refer to feedback on the scientific paper that is being retracted, not personal performance feedback or anything like that. When I red this first, wasn't immediately clear what this was about.

Good point, that also took a bit of disentangling for me.

As such, I find it really quite baffling that someone would be unwilling to share that scientific feedback with her, or who raised it.

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