AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google • Hacker News Board

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#611

Post by shuckles » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 12:50 AM UTC

powersnail wrote: post #586

jsmith45 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While there hasn't been enough evidence to fully condemn either side, I disagree that this is just poor communication. Unless Google deliberately changed the enforcement of the policy just to mess with her, she should have known the policy. It doesn't seem to be a complicated process, and 2 weeks is a reasonably short time to wait. On the other side, Google has been in this game long enough, that they must know a pap…

I will say that having many processes, selectively enforced is a common cover for disparate treatment.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Post by frongpik » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 12:51 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #524

beervirus wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, certainly it is and she undoubtedly knew that, but her job was guiding her employer to make ethical decisions / build an ethical framework. If you expect your ethicists to prioritize having a stable career and avoid potential career-limiting moves, I'm not sure how they're supposed to do their job. I would honestly be skeptical of a self-declared ethicist who's very good at climbing corporate ladders and has nev…

Her real job was to make google look good in the progressive circles. If she understood that, she would've made a stellar career.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Post by oh_sigh » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 12:52 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #290

oh_sigh wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The posted email specifically says something about behavior not expected of her position. So it seems possible if you are critical, but fulfill your obligations, they would accept your 2 weeks resignation. Is there an example you have, even self-reported, of a person who was merely critical of Google and was not given a rampdown? Or someone who was critical and did not fulfill their job obligations, and was given a r…

> The posted email specifically says something about behavior not expected of her position. Yes, and its unclear what this behavior was. > Is there an example you have, even self-reported, of a person who was merely critical of Google and was not given a rampdown? No, which is my point. This is unusual behavior on the part of Google, because it's not explained (and certainly not obvious) what the failure was.

> Yes, and its unclear what this behavior was.

The email clearly states: "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"

> No, which is my point.

No, that is the opposite of your point. You said that people critical of Google have been given a rampdown, so it is unusual for her to not be given a rampdown. My point was that there may be other reasons for her not being given a rampdown - that being exactly what was in the email shared about her not behaving as a manager. If you think that she was fired solely for being critical and not given a rampdown, then there should be other examples of people being fired without a rampdown for merely being critical.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#614

Post by bitbang » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

anonvenger wrote: post #511

bitbang wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She is defining herself and her existence using critical theory, and so her perception of experiences is filtered through that world view. That will always create a "toxic" environment, not to mention just make a person miserable to be around. Critical theory is useful for the purpose of study and quantification of different social bias, norms, tends, values, or whatever other social aspect you want to slice up. The…

Nitpick. Jesus Christ raised the bar to 'love your enemies'. 43 You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward…

Completely agree with you. I would normally expect the inclusion of "enemies" into "neighbours" to be implicit in light of the prelude and postlude around the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Post by kristjansson » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #510

Upvoter33 wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 re…

The fine-grained classification work associated with her thesis isn't an _easy_ technical problem. The dataset, labeling, and architecture generated a few other first-author conference papers for her besides the thesis, so it's not like she just applied an off-the-shelf model to an existing dataset...

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Post by jpab » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #421

This is a really hard problem space to solve. I'm very sorry to see this drama happening and I have sympathy for both sides. I routinely run into the issue that if I try to understand why people did something that went badly/harmed people without looking to blame them per se, I get accused of being "an apologist." But in practice trying to understand why things happen is essential to finding a real solution. Merely a…

> I recently had an exchange with someone that reminded me how important trust and mutual respect is and how the lack of such tends to cause problems to escalate.

What feels like a breakdown of trust in society has been on my mind a lot recently. Without trust, it seems communication and collaboration becomes impossible. How can society solve any of its problems when people can't discuss anything about those problems or potential solutions without it turning into a fight?

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#617

Post by gnusty_gnurc » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 12:58 AM UTC

suifbwish wrote: post #584

rbanffy wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly hard to prove discrimination or harassment was based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or political views, even when it is. You say "people with those types of built in personal issues float to the top" aren't you implying their positions are not earned based on merit and, therefore, that they are less competent than their peers?

I am implying that they often scare away their competition by attacking the character of the individuals who they work with, rather than focusing on true accomplishments that would give them legitimate merit for the positions they aspire to. Their supervisors can even be intimidated into promoting them if they have a history of filing complaints of discrimination when things don’t go their way. It’s also possible tha…

I think there’s definitely a dynamic in any dogmatic arena (social justice is dogma heaven) where the most pathological people thrive.

In the high-dogma arena there’s incredibly easy and visible signals that give you the ability to appear like “one of the good ones.”

I think coincidentally this is highly attractive to elite circles too. Follow all the social justice rituals and shibboleth and you suddenly get the camouflage of an empathetic, good person.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#618

Post by gameswithgo » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 12:58 AM UTC

hpoe wrote: post #577

hardwaregeek wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a little ungenerous. Social activists may go over the line and be rude or abrasive, but unfortunately it's impossible to be a polite social activist. Activism fundamentally requires telling people that their actions should be modified, that their beliefs may be flawed, that their systems have problems. It's really hard to do that and be a likeable person. Of course social activists may at times cross the line…

May I direct you to watch Daryl Davis's ted talk or really anything he speaks about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw For context he is a black man that has gotten over a hundred leaders of the KKK, including former convicts to leave the Klan. Not by arguing with them, not be reasoning, not by showing them the effects of their behaviour, but instead by sitting down, talking with them and becoming their fri…

he is amazing, I lack the self control

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Post by pseudalopex » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

Tycho wrote: post #490

pseudalopex wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She called it being fired because Google terminated her employment earlier than she offered to resign.

It’s a strange reaction though. “I’m resigning.” “OK, that’s your prerogative, bye.” “Wait! I didn’t mean NOW! How can you fire me like this?!” Then make a big deal about being fired on social media. Seems to me that someone who genuinely was ready to resign would have just quietly walked away, even if they imagined it ending less abruptly. Can’t know for sure, obviously.

Resigning doesn't mean leaving quietly. Especially for a researcher ordered to retract a paper.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#620

Post by frongpik » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 1:02 AM UTC

jerome-jh wrote: post #379

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…

> behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager. Maybe my remark is down to earth but, she literally told her group to stop working. I do not know of any company where this is an acceptable behavior for a manager. Besides the disagreements, it sounds to me that was the action that caused Google to pull the trigger. Also from Dean's email it is pretty clear there are a number of new products…

She was fired for damaging Google's reputation. In her email, she carelessly demanded names of those who reported her, that can be interpreted as extortion, and Jeff didn't miss the opportunity to call her out. Her offer to resign was another mistake: she would be fired anyways, but for a different reason and with more paperwork. Now if she takes this to a court, she would have to tell the judge what she needed the names for.