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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#311

Post by mlyle »

chokeartist wrote: post #244
sudosysgen wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her point is more than that. I think that she was trying to say that ML systems have an inherent bias that is independent of their data. This is a consequence of the fact that it's not possible to do generalization, and thus learning, without bias to begin with. What an AI researcher does when deciding which architecture is essentially tuning the bias in the generalization system in order to produce better results, w…

> Her point is more than that. I think that she was trying to say that ML systems have an inherent bias that is independent of their data. In general I take these types of tropes to be cloaked (politically correct) way of saying "fuck x group".

Eh. I think there's some legitimate concern that AI isn't fair to marginalized groups for a variety of reasons.

Dataset bias is only one way this occurs, though. Even if you include more colored faces, you still may be taking pictures with a camera that doesn't capture as much contrast. Or even if you retrain, you may have chosen model structure to optimize behavior in a biased dataset. Or... if you're considering the cost of misidentification by a facial recognition system used by, say, police, you need to be sure that you take a perspective that applies to society as a whole and not to your own interactions with police.

It's perfectly reasonable to say "AI is worsening the experience of minorities in various ways" and to differ with responses that assume with slight additional care in curating datasets that the problem will be completely solved.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#312

Post by yamrzou »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #81
prionassembly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of her replies is regrettable: Yann: “ML systems are biased when data is biased" Timnit: “I’m sick of this framing. Tired of it. Many people have tried to explain, many scholars. Listen to us. You can’t just reduce harms caused by ML to dataset bias. Even amidst of world wide protests people don’t hear our voices and try to learn from us, they assume they’re experts in everything. Let us lead her and you fol…

I find it strange to take issue with the "I'm so tired" line. It would seem to be entirely appropriate for circumstances where you see an argument that you have replied to many times but that completely ignores your reply. It also just doesn't strike me as particularly hostile or profane. Quitting twitter and making a show of it strikes me as a far more emotional reaction, but nobody here seems to take any issue with…

> To tie this back to AI, it would mean that as long as your models produce racially biased results, they simply aren't ready for deployment or publication. Go find better data until your work is no longer liable to inflict harm on anybody.

Well, the disagreement is about publication. Yann LeCun himself said that "The consequences of bias are considerably more dire in a deployed product than in an academic paper."[1]

Why would it be wrong to publish research based on biased data?

[1] https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274790777516961792

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#313

Post by uoaei »

compiler-guy wrote: post #254
uoaei wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But she didn't ask for two weeks' notice. She signaled she was considering giving notice but had not done so yet.

She said, "If you can't meet these conditions, I will resign effective ." Google said, "We can't meet these conditions, we accept your resignation and move it to ."

No, she didn't say that.

She said she may set a date in the future for her resignation.

That is non-committal and non-specific. Your characterization is inaccurate.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#314

Post by mlyle »

VHRanger wrote: post #281
curiousllama wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it were the case, responding to "retract this paper" with "No; I prefer to resign" is/should be par for the course for a researcher.

They submitted thee paper for internal review one day before their external deadline. They set themselves up for failure regardless of the paper's content.

I suspect reality is somewhere between our two accounts, where one describes this as a purely deadline-related problem and the other describes months of effort to seek feedback via various channels and moving goalposts for what types of review were expected.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#316

Post by robertlagrant »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #42
room500 wrote: post #23

I feel the title is a little misleading. "withering email" == "anger-fueled message sent by a manager to a large group that asks readers to ignore company policy and start arguments with other leaders" I don't see where "ethical AI researcher" comes into play here. Instead, I see a leader at a company unprofessionally sending messages to a large listserv and is later fired. What am I missing?

What's misleading about the title? You have your own way of characterizing the email, and so does the publication. Them not agreeing with you isn't the same as misleading you.

Disagreement about characterisation matters if one characterisation is just not true.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#317

Post by tomp »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #303
tomp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's how it is supposed to work. Are you sure? Even primary school bullying is better, at least you can see the abuser.

Except she is the abuser.

She is accused of being an abuser. I think we've seen enough fake accusations of various kinds of abuse (i.e. crimes without proof, one person's word vs another's) in the past few years to know better.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#318

Post by rubatuga »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #81
prionassembly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of her replies is regrettable: Yann: “ML systems are biased when data is biased" Timnit: “I’m sick of this framing. Tired of it. Many people have tried to explain, many scholars. Listen to us. You can’t just reduce harms caused by ML to dataset bias. Even amidst of world wide protests people don’t hear our voices and try to learn from us, they assume they’re experts in everything. Let us lead her and you fol…

I find it strange to take issue with the "I'm so tired" line. It would seem to be entirely appropriate for circumstances where you see an argument that you have replied to many times but that completely ignores your reply. It also just doesn't strike me as particularly hostile or profane. Quitting twitter and making a show of it strikes me as a far more emotional reaction, but nobody here seems to take any issue with…

What Yann said about data bias is a fact. He wasn’t dismissing your concerns nor distracting from it. A lot of people tried to extrapolate what Yann meant, but from the way I see it, if more people learn about the cause of this racial bias, the more people will be inclined to use fairer and diverse datasets in their future ML research.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#319

Post by zemo »

ipnon wrote: post #217

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 bet…

> I hope her research won't suffer for it.

of course it will. The big tech companies have created networks of users and user data that is beyond anything that can be replicated in an academic or laboratory setting. By saying that it's fine for corporations to have draconian oversight over research about the systems they build, what you are saying is that these systems cannot be researched for any purposes other than to make them more profitable. That is an abdication of responsibility.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#320

Post by flipgimble »

mellosouls wrote: post #229
Crash0v3rid3 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point me to that Twitter thread?

Overview here, pasted from another commenter elsewhere in this rabbit hole. https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...

It sounds like LeCun stepped away from twitter and that thread because he was fed up with the toxic discourse and did not attribute that to Timnit in particular. Its strange that OP post sounds exactly like what LeCun was asking people to stop doing:

".. I'd like to ask everyone to please stop attacking each other via Twitter or other means. In particular, I'd like everyone to please stop attacking @timnitGebru and everyone who has been critical of my posts. Conflicts, verbal or otherwise, are hurtful and counter-productive... " -- https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1277372578231996424?s=20

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