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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#541

Post by dmix »

tolbish wrote: post #300
dmix wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is the same story every time, isn't it? They always flame out of the company with some over complicated victim story because the company had the nerve to not 100% buy in to their non-optional radical demands. It has become an archetype at this point.

I can't tell if this is about James Damore or not. Is he the victim you are referring to?

No, James was just a random engineer who got fired after the VP of Diversity took issue with the memo he shared. Firing people for sharing unpopular opinions is a whole other nest of bees. One that I'm sure Timmit and her ilk would fully support. So he wasn't exactly the person I had in mind. Nor was Timmit fired and I don't believe Damore was pushing unconditional demands.

But that said I can see some similarities with the whole politics at work landmine issue.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#542

Post by tinyhouse »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #398
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 don't think she's saying she's marginalized because she's a well known researcher who people listen to, she's saying she's marginalized because one or more people, who have their identities concealed, asked her to retract a paper she already published via HR. Granted, because the process she described is anonymous and opaque by design, it could have happened to other people at the company and only they, HR, and the…

I didn't mean she is saying she's marginalized because she's a well known researcher. From her email:

"Does that sound like a standard procedure to you or does it just happen to people like me who are constantly dehumanized"

She is not happy with the process and she is taking it personal. She was hired as a lead researcher and manages a big group and project. She has the nerve to say she is constantly dehumanized? 99% of Google employees would want to be in her position.

Google is a big company with many good but also bad processes and policies (I never worked there). Instead of trying to make change she starts wars. Her thing with Lecun was exactly the same. The funny thing she said she hired a feminist lawyer to sue Google a year before! She still kept her job after that. What company does that? She is lucky she had an employer like Google.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#543

Post by warkdarrior »

denkmoon wrote: post #504
hpoe wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This was an internal review of the paper, as far as I can tell the paper was never published outside of Google.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#544

Post by hintymad »

elevenoh wrote: post #454
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…

Thanks for sharing. Curious: How did she 'force him to give up on twitter'? There's a lotta companies who've hired ticking time bombs like this. They don't get why they were truly hired.

Easy. Just call that person a racist, a bigot, or an oppressor without a shred of evidence.

> A person: I think bias in machine learning is caused by bias in training data. > Me: Why are you ignoring all I've been saying? You're a racist. You're a white man who oppresses. I'm not going to talk to a bigot like you.

Repeat this a few times, the attacked will be punished both online and offline. Justice served.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#545

Post by basicneo »

stevecalifornia wrote: post #519
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…

"You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." ~ The Social Network A good number of social activists are rude and abrasive and then blame how people react as racism/sexism. No one wants to be…

Experiencing marginalisation is frustrating, and frustrated people sometimes have outbursts.

I don't think we can infer much from a few highly publicised events.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#546

Post by IvyMike »

jdashg wrote: post #532
IvyMike wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this tweet: https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334343577044979712 > I said here are the conditions. If you can meet them great I’ll take my name off this paper, if not then I can work on a last date. To employers, that qualifies as a conditional resignation.

The employer can't modify the specifics of the resignation by "moving it up", since that's not what the conditional resignation offered. They can fire her, sure, but they can't call it "resignation". You can't "resign" someone, but you can ask for their immediate resignation. If it's not voluntary, it's firing.

> The employer can't modify the specifics of the resignation

You say this, yet I have seen it done many times.

Of course not being a lawyer of any sort, I don't know. Is there a reference for your claim?

Jeff's email is in line with what I have seen done elsewhere, and given the high profile of the incident, I'd be shocked if legal hadn't been consulted on the wording.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#547

Post by hintymad »

1024core wrote: post #500
deanCommie wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It was discussed on HN a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23696427 Basically (to summarize a lot), his point was: an ML model is only as good as the data you feed it. If, say, the photos for your face recognition model are only of white men, then obviously the model will do well on white men, while (possibly) not doing as well on other races or genders. This is a statement of fact, and nothing con…

That LeCunn needed to defend his own character out of such simple discussion shows everything that's wrong with the US' progressive culture.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#548

Post by GVIrish »

hpoe wrote: post #472
GVIrish wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't even share with her the feedback on her paper to give her the opportunity to fix it. They didn't have to say who the feedback was from, but they could've at least told her the substance of the feedback.

To quote from Dean's email "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." I can imagine wanting to know the feedback, but she didn't ask for that she asked for the identity of everyone pe…

A few things don't add up then.

Timnit claims that she was told at a meeting called on short notice that her paper was being retracted because of anonymous feedback. She said she asked about the substance of the feedback and they refused to tell her.

After that meeting, she is told she can be read a private document with some, but not all of the anonymous feedback.

That led to Gebru sending a frustrated email to her colleagues and a separate email with conditions that she was willing to resign over. In that email it seems like she asked to knows the identities of the people who gave the feedback that let to the demand for retraction.

Jeff Dean says that Timnit wanted the identity of the people who gave the feedback as a condition for staying. Then he describes what that feedback was. He doesn't acknowledge that Timnit was not given the substance of the feedback in the first meeting when she asked for it. And it sounds like the full feedback wasn't given later during that private reading.

The feedback Dean cites that led to the retraction doesn't at all sound like something that required the protection of identities, and certainly nothing that required keeping that feedback secret. If the reviewers felt like the paper left out some relevant research, why wasn't that communicated fully and clearly in the first meeting?

Jeff Dean's email seems to leave out a lot of context about everything leading up to Timnit threatening to resign. At the very least it doesn't seem like the reasons the surprise retraction order came down weren't revealed at all until some time after that first meeting.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#549

Post by GVIrish »

dash2 wrote: post #371
GVIrish wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but HR wouldn't share the feedback on her paper and give her an opportunity to update it. Instead they demanded that she retract the paper. How is it fair or standard to make someone retract a paper because of anonymous and secret criticisms that the researcher isn't even given a chance to address?

Actually, to be fair, anonymous referee reports are absolutely standard in academia, and they may be standard part of Google practice in this field - and if so that might be good practice. Waiving anonymity could compromise the integrity of the intellectual process.

I could maybe understand the anonymity, but I don't see why the substance of the feedback that let to the whole paper getting retracted was kept secret at first. At least give the paper's authors an opportunity to update the paper.

The reasons Jeff Dean cited in his email for the retraction sound like things that could've been fixable.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#550

Post by hardwaregeek »

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…

I do not know the details of this case and I can't speak to the subject's character. However I can't help but note that people who study the effects of race and gender tend to bring race/gender into anything and everything, because well, that's their job. If your response is that race and gender should be brought into only the areas where race and gender are relevant, I'd respond that the prevailing opinion among gender and race scholars is that gender/race is relevant everywhere.
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