Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

platformer.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 926 posts

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#651

Post by throwaway2245 »

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…

> 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.

I have experienced exactly that, in academia.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#652

Post by pas »

kenjackson wrote: post #481
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…

He's still posting on Twitter. Did so today, and yesterday. Her response to that tweet is a bit harsh, but not completely unreasonable. I'm not a Twitter expert, so I can't really stitch together their conversation on Twitter to see where/when it goes off the rails.

What/where is her response? Could you link it please?

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#653

Post by anothermoron »

sorenjan wrote: post #479
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…

Reminds me of the drama with Coraline Ada Ehmke and the Contributor Covenant a few years back that forced Linus Torvalds to take a break. These people are drama seeking instigators that demand that people do as they say, and companies keep giving in to them. It's a kind of rent seeking and power grabbing.

Github got rid of her pretty quickly. And guess what ? She accused them of being sexist for doing so.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#654

Post by lawnchair_larry »

victor106 wrote: post #624
mstg wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you. Screaming racism/sexism/marginalisation every time someone disagrees with you is annoying and tiring. I am a second degree immigrant in Norway and I always see this behaviour in people who blame society when they don't get their way when in reality people rarely get their way all the time. I hope the level of stupid activism does not reach Norway although we do copy many stupidities of the U…

Falsely screaming racism and sexism at everything hurts people who are actually impacted. This behavior also enables racists and sexists.

Worst of all, it pushes non-racists to become actual racists.

If you start attacking people who previously had no problem with you, grouping them as evil on the basis of their physical characteristics, you’re going to get various forms of backlash. One of those is going to be those people seeking support among others belonging to the evil group identity that you carved out for them, and they’re going to push back in kind.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#655

Post by tolbish »

dmix wrote: post #541
tolbish wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I thought he was fired for insinuating that his female colleagues were hired for reasons other than their merit, not just for sharing a memo with unpopular opinions.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#656

Post by krapp »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #654
victor106 wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falsely screaming racism and sexism at everything hurts people who are actually impacted. This behavior also enables racists and sexists.

Worst of all, it pushes non-racists to become actual racists. If you start attacking people who previously had no problem with you, grouping them as evil on the basis of their physical characteristics, you’re going to get various forms of backlash. One of those is going to be those people seeking support among others belonging to the evil group identity that you carved out for them, and they’re going to push back in…

> One of those is going to be those people seeking support among others belonging to the evil group identity that you carved out for them, and they’re going to push back in kind.

I don't think that happens very often outside of the villain origin stories in comic books. A normal non-racist person doesn't react to being called a racist by becoming the biggest racist they can just to spite people.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#657

Post by philipkglass »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #641
jpab wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't know the answers to that. I've been on Hacker News over 11 years. I would like to think I've been building bridges, but it seems like nothing I do is ever enough to reassure people I'm not some SJW Feminazi here to just piss on the guys and let them know what misogynistic assholes they are and it gets hard to keep trying when most of the community has watched me starve for years and openly told me "Not my pro…

I vouched for your comment. It had been auto-marked [dead] due to containing some blocked keyword -- perhaps the very word that you talked about trying to avoid. I have noticed that a few words cause posts to initially show [dead] even when they are from high karma members such as yourself.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#658

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#659

Post by haram_masala »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #630
splaytreemap wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fact that she had a huge salary is why she feels comfortable doing this. The average person needs their job to pay the bills so they don't want to rock the boat. She's already set for life so she doesn't care who she offends because getting fired is not a big deal for her.

Set for life? How much do you think a staff scientist is paid?

My guess is that she made a base of around $450K and probably equal that in options and bonuses.
Post reply on HN