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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#501

Post by joshuamorton »

refulgentis wrote: post #495
istjohn wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you seem to think that her willingness to assert her rights under the law should discredit her in any way.

The thrust of her thread today is that it is shocking how Google dumped her with no warning - it sounds like, instead, they continued employing her for months and months while her lawyer was threatening to sue the company, and the culminating event was making demands for the company to meet if she was to stay. Declining to accept an employee's set of ultimatums, an employee who already engaged in threatening legal ac…

> instead, they continued employing her for months and months while her lawyer was threatening to sue the company

This doesn't at all sound like the case. It sounds like the company did something aggressive, she got representation who threatened to sue, and the company backed off, and all of this happened over a year ago and is essentially a closed chapter.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#502

Post by dekhn »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #408
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…

What I don't understand is why nobody discusses this from the point of view of academic freedom and research integrity. My boss says "retract your paper" and I retract my paper? In what dystopian sci-fi novel? That's just mad.

I've published academic research while working at Google. If I got an emergency request to retract a published paper (note that I would have already followed all the necessary steps for publication approval internally), I'd retract it immediately, if there was a legitimate reason (you can see on retractionwatch the sorts of things that lead to retractions). If there wasn't, I'd ask "can we pause the retraction and figure out a better solution based on data", and if the answer was "no", I'd retract it immediately, but follow up with a vigorous protest.

Industrial researchers and non-PIs (IE, research analyst working in a PI's lab) don't have the same freedom and integrity rights as a PI. To me this seems like a reasonable (and probably the only reasonable) policy for industry.

I don't really think it's dystopian- if a paper I wrote reached the point of needing a retraction it means some serious messup occurred or there's a major PR fiasco.

Note that in this case I am not sure if there was a retraction, or an desubmission- the paper hadn't been published yet so it's not really a candidate for retraction. The term for this is 'withdraw submission'

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#503

Post by beervirus »

istjohn wrote: post #485
thebladerunner wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, the first paragraph of defertoreotar@'s comment is a quote from Timnit Gebru's tweet where she admits to recently conspiring a legal battle against Google, while on Google's payroll. A wolf in sheep's clothing...

I'm not sure why you seem to think that her willingness to assert her rights under the law should discredit her in any way.

Rattling your sabre about suing your employer is certainly a career-limiting decision.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#504

Post by denkmoon »

hpoe wrote: post #461
1024core wrote: post #449

This person forced Yann LeCun (one of the top 3 AI/ML researchers today, head of Facebook AI, and an ML researcher since the 80s) to give up on Twitter after she took exception to this tweet of his: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274782757907030016 She lives her life attacking people who she disagrees with, and brings in race/gender into any conflict where she's involved. I am surprised Google had hired her, beca…

So I don't know enough to make a well informed opinion; however it seems part of the aggreivement on her part is that she was not given the names of those who peer reviewed her paper. If internally she has a history of bringing race or sex into every discussion I could see why they'd rather be anonymous. Even being accused of being racist can ruin someone's career in this current climate.

Are reviewers of academic papers not typically anonymous anyway? Or is this some kind of internal review system rather than academic peer review?

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#505

Post by ipnon »

breatheoften wrote: post #492

Why do these parties not agree on the timeline for the review period? One party claims they had been going through review for 2 months and one said the review was submitted with only 1 day ... It seems likely that both sides are mis-characterizing events in pursuit of their own goals -- which to me suggests a general environment where parties are tending not to communicate with the goal of arriving at agreement -- bu…

It's a bit presumptuous to dismiss all of HN as having the same opinion, when you yourself are voicing a contrary opinion on HN itself.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#506

Post by somepersoninny »

I don't have much to say about her research or Google, really. I don't know much about AI or this group she's in, or her for that matter. But I'm all for diversity in tech and women's rights, etc.

What strikes me is how out of touch she seems to be. We're in the middle of pandemic and millions of people are out of work. The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. However, due to luck, her credentials and research, she has been able to continue working for one of the top companies in the world and is even able to take a vacation. Good for her.

And yet, while on vacation, she makes demands of her employer that perhaps she was aware they wouldn't/couldn't meet.

I'm stunned by the if you don't accept my conditions, I'll deal with you, when I'm good and ready, when I get back from vacation. Like, how out of touch and tone deaf is this?

Anyway, the first thing she does, after rage quitting, is to run to Twitter to complain. She even said on Twitter that she didn't have a lawyer and wanted to find one ASAP. Honestly, everything Google did seems perfectly reasonable. Is her behavior unbecoming of a manager? Based on what I saw on Twitter, I'd say 'Yes'.

I had been following her on Twitter and saw this pop-up last night. It was kind of confusing and seemed like it was going to become very annoying, so I unfollowed. Then today, it kept showing up in other people's feeds, so I blocked her and muted people who retweeted her.

There is such a thing as a "brilliant jerk" and usually companies keep such people around too long. Seems like Google decided this headache wasn't worth it, and cut her loose. But now we see a "brilliant jerk" who is female and a minority/POC.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#507

Post by beervirus »

jsmith45 wrote: post #486
sjs382 wrote: post #397

It's hard to make too much sense about what happened. Here's what I made of it, if anyone can point out any important mistakes/inaccuracies/details: 1. She and her co-authors submitted a paper for review 1 day before its (external, for publication?) due date. It's supposed to be submitted to Google 2 weeks prior, so they can review. 2. The authors submitted it externally before the review was returned. 3. Google deci…

It sounds to me like Google has a policy that papers must be internally reviewed before they can be "published". She understood publish in the academic sense, while Google views sending the paper out for conference review as publishing. The paper ends up failing internal review, so per policy it must be promptly retracted. This is confusing to the academic who expects to get access to the raw review responses so that…

Looks like a fairly classic case of a person who injects race and gender into every topic... injecting race and gender into a topic.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#508

Post by pb7 »

davorak wrote: post #497
pb7 wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email from Google here[0] and corroboration from Jeff Dean here[1]: "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…

What is missing and would make it clearer where things fall is the email from Timnit to Jeff. Then the language used by Timnit could analyzed and reasoned through to determine if it counts as a formal offer to resign or not. I not jumping on any bandwagons without at least that or equivalent.

>I not jumping on any bandwagons without at least that or equivalent.

Which is exactly why she has refrained from releasing it throughout this whole drama: plausible deniability.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#509

Post by refulgentis »

deanCommie wrote: post #455
1024core wrote: post #449

This person forced Yann LeCun (one of the top 3 AI/ML researchers today, head of Facebook AI, and an ML researcher since the 80s) to give up on Twitter after she took exception to this tweet of his: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274782757907030016 She lives her life attacking people who she disagrees with, and brings in race/gender into any conflict where she's involved. I am surprised Google had hired her, beca…

> forced ... to give up on Twitter after she took exception to this tweet Can you provide a source for this. What did she say? There are legitimate criticisms of Yann's tweet. Just because he is technically correct about how ML works doesn't mean that what he is saying isn't ALSO a classical dismissal of the concerns people have with AI. The issue isn't that ML is evil or racist. The issue is that if it is used too o…

I agree with you on the principles & morals, but frankly this reads as scolding - all he did was explain how this can be avoided, which is good context to provide to the public. There isn't some hidden message there where he's "dismissing concerns people have with AI" or he's facilitating "outcomes that could be used for evil or with racist intents"

His tweet doesn't rule out the possibility that he secretly has a malicious set of incentives, just like your handle doesn't rule out that you're a Communist spy sent to fracture the American psyche. Yet, its ridiculous. I feel like a lot of the world in 2020 is for some reason a hostile filter is applied ~99% of the time on the internet, and you _rarely_ see that in personal interactions in real life.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#510

Post by sorenjan »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #482
sorenjan wrote: post #460

AI ethics researcher sounds like a fluff position anyway, she got hired to give Google a shine of inclusiveness to the non technical people that think AI is going to take over the world and doesn't understand that the current state of it is nothing more than pattern recognition and statistics. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it still bothers me that people like this get highly paid positions to point out probl…

"but it still bothers me that people like this get highly paid positions to point out problems seemingly without any technical knowledge" You are making a lot of (wrong) assumptions here. Not too many Stanford PhDs are graduating without technical knowledge

Ok, I read her Wikipedia entry and apparently she has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford. Those are probably fairly standardized, so I'll concede that she does have some technical knowledge.

I have however seen way to many doctorates that seem technical while they're not. There's a common theme in her career, and it's not necessarily technical knowledge.

She worked at Microsoft research, sounds really impressive. But it was in the "Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics in AI lab". which sounds like a PR stunt. Her research was supported by Stanford DARE fellowship, which is mainly concerned with increasing diversity. She was an AI researcher at Google, but it consisted in pointing out bias in datasets. Her PhD research[1] was using street view images to find pick up trucks and finding a correlation with republican voters, which sounds more like a sociological application of computer vision than a hard technical problem.

[1]https://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13108

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