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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#381

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #349
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welcome to the real world, companies have policies and once you join them you lose your freedom to do whatever the heck you want. Yea there is something uniquely activist academic about all these complaints you see surfacing nowadays. As though millenials are landing in industry now and they're surprised their employers are companies selling products and not activist organizations. And you're right it's even funnie…

"Millenials" have been entering the industry for more than 15 years now. Don't put an entire generation in the same basket as a few visible people.

Yea it's a broad/inaccurate catch-all, but I'm a millenial and I feel like when I was in college (early 2010s) you were beginning to see illiberal attitudes on campus start to take off and normalize.

Like stigmatizing advocates of free expression, a general embrace of safety-ism, scream invectives until the bureaucracy buckles tactics, etc.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#382

Post by dash2 »

tomp wrote: post #317
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has anyone (except grandparent) accused her of being an abuser? I don't think that is what Google claimed.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#383

Post by je42 »

rubatuga wrote: post #318
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point is that she has an expectation of Yann to go further than just stating a fact.

I assume she thinks that Yann has enough intellectual capacity to improve situation of biased ML but doesnt execute. Further, my guess is that the reason why he doesnt execute is not transparent to her, hence frustrating.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#384

Post by adamsea »

prionassembly wrote: post #193
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> so... I guess you're tired of it? I'm not. Many other rhetorical moves have a lot of politics to muddle through / implicit assumptions that can be disavowed in bad faith, etc. I don't like to engage in that kind of discussion at all. But the "I'm so tired" bit is both condescending (and it takes... something... to condescend to Yan LeCunn) and evasive. The end result is authoritarian -- look man, this is decided an…

> Many other rhetorical moves have a lot of politics to muddle through / implicit assumptions that can be disavowed in bad faith, etc. I don't like to engage in that kind of discussion at all.

But isn’t what you described so vague and subjective, that you can apply it to pretty much anything?

IMHO it’s more honest to say “I sit out of conversations I don’t like”, which is an entirely fair and understandable decision to make :).

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#385

Post by mst »

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.

A manager with every reason to cover his ass is claiming that.

Her email, sent before that claim was made, suggests that wasn't even remotely the case - and it's entirely possible to think "she seems like an ass" and "this smells like bullshit" are both true.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#386

Post by ggreer »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #294

>> A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in lan…

> Well, this is why. Because, as a rule, if you are a researcher in academia you won't be asked to retract your research because it makes someone look bad.

If your results go against current dogma, or if they reveal an uncomfortable truth, your paper will be rejected for spurious reasons every time you submit it. A recent example from Glenn Geher[1]:

> I have published more than 100 academic pieces in my career to date. I've pretty much been through it all.

> From this context, I will say that the most difficult paper that my team (the New Paltz Evolutionary Psychology Lab) and I have ever tried to publish was a paper on the topic of political motivations that underlie academic values of academics.

That's the pushback you get for researching political motivations in academia. It's much worse if your ideas directly connect to social policies. If your ideas are particularly heretical (or you engage in good faith with heretics), you'll have your life threatened by violent mobs. This has happened to Allison Stanger, Bret Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, and many others.

1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean...

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#387

Post by tomcat27 »

tinyhouse wrote: post #95

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 mar…

I am not disregarding the skepticism coming from that drama with LeCun..

In the email Jeff writes that the paper she wanted to submit conference review system did not meet Google's internal review standards.

To me this looks really fishy! I did not read her work, but Google has conflict of interest in publishing this paper? If the paper is so out of date as Jeff writes, it will get rejected in conference review system. Reviewers are known for being brutal..

Perhaps she's right to call out BS here, probably not the way she did.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#388

Post by jeffbee »

contemporary343 wrote: post #292

It looks like the paper was critical of large language models: https://www.fastcompany.com/90582375/timnit-gebru-google-fir... The original article has been updated with Jeff Dean's response, while a member of Gebru's team (who still works at Google Brain) states that Dean's email is misleading and inaccurate: https://twitter.com/alexhanna/status/1334579764573691904 As I understand it: The paper had already been subm…

Quite a contrast between Dean's message and Gebru's. I know which one I'd want leading my team.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#389

Post by gaze »

prionassembly wrote: post #193
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> so... I guess you're tired of it? I'm not. Many other rhetorical moves have a lot of politics to muddle through / implicit assumptions that can be disavowed in bad faith, etc. I don't like to engage in that kind of discussion at all. But the "I'm so tired" bit is both condescending (and it takes... something... to condescend to Yan LeCunn) and evasive. The end result is authoritarian -- look man, this is decided an…

Yann was (actively or unintentionally) refusing to participate in the same conversation. His response was the "facts don't care about feelings" one. It's not wrong but it is a thought terminating cliche.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#390

Post by bitshift010 »

bitshift010 wrote: post #13

Chief AI Scientist at Facebook, Yann Lecun, quit Twitter after a back and forth with this particular AI researcher - https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter... >I’m always amazed at how people can continue to do thing after thing like this and then turn around and ask me for some sort of extra DEI work or input. This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which K…

Jeff Dean, Head of Google AI has responded (original article has been updated.) claiming the following:

>Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback. Timnit wrote that if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date. We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google.

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