Looks like she bluffed her way out of a job. I’m not sure I feel sorry for this person at all.
AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
701–710 of 926 posts
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#702Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We don't know the full list of demands Timnit is far from silent. She could share them if she wanted to. She appears to think that that would hurt rather than help her.
Considering she says she made a list of issues she'd like fixed and that she'd discuss it when she came back from PTO without ever mentioning resignation and that was answered with a "we accept your resignation" passed on to her reports, I believe she has legal representation. The financial implications of her resigning vs her being fired are probably significant. In Google's place I'd probably negotiate an agreement…
Imo people like her make the research environment hostile than actually moving the field forward.
People with logical mindframe leaders are required for such tasks not emotional twitter whining sjw.
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#703This 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…
Seems like typical SJW behavior. Hopefully more companies will stand up to these far leftists and kick them out.
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#704Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm torn on this. Actually, if you think you're a researcher and then feedback comes in this weird way, that seems pretty weird. At the same time... "people like me who are constantly dehumanized" - really? I mean maybe, but to me this sounds like hyperbole, and actually, weaponized hyperbole. This is someone who's a respected and presumably very highly paid researcher. Dehumanized ?
“People like me,” not referring to her privilege, but to women and people of color, I would guess. Since there are serious culture and systemic biases / prejudices against women and PoC.
Let me assure you that whining on Twitter and bring a sjw while smearing everyone they don't agree with as racist is not the best way to reduce the bias.
Really she is saying dehumanizing?? That the typical woke cry.
I know plenty of poc of Southasian descent who have no such problem because they behave professionally unlike these people.
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#705Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's a fair characterization of Gebru's argument there at all. A better summary might be "You're the Chief AI Scientist at a massively influential and profitable company with billions of users and exabytes of data, you can't just throw up your hands and say 'welp, that's what the model spits out so that's what we're stuck with.'"
Its more like " There are difficulties on collecting data and historical reasons that leads to bias in the trained model" Other side " no you are a racist and responsible for bias due for being a white male"
It's pretty clear that Gebru criticized LeCun for being apathetic about an obviously biased model, not because he's a white male. And again, "There are difficulties on collecting data and historical reasons that leads to bias in the trained model" is accurate, but it's still a total cop-out! There's no way Facebook would let results like [0] slide if there were money at stake - they'd get more training data, or even throw out training images of white faces, if they had to - so why is LeCun defending someone else's failure to do so?
More importantly, how should that make us feel about the very real possibility of LeCun serving as an expert advisor on, say, police or other military applications of AI? Would he again just throw up his hands and say, "Well the training data consists disproportionately of black faces, so the model disproportionately implicates black people, nothing we can do about it"?
[0] https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg/status/1274314622447820801
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess the way I think about it is this: Yann has a long history in ML. He's probably had to deal with bias problems for decades. Probably pretty experienced with it. Now he's heading up some Facebook ML stuff and on a daily basis he watches hundreds to thousands of engineers work on systems that process and learn from billions of users. I feel like after you do that for a while, you gain enough wisdom and experienc…
My understanding is that this is not the first time they engaged on this type of topic, and Yann has a history of ignoring other people who brought up similar criticisms to him (at conferences, etc.) At some point you lose the assumption of good faith, and deserve to be called out for refusing to learn. For what it's worth, I'm well aware of who Yann is, and was at the time as well. That doesn't make him immune to be…
I lost the assumption of good faith already in her first tweet, in particular
>You can’t just reduce harms caused by ML to dataset bias.
She's already attacking a strawman right there. Yann did not deny any harms caused by ML.
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#707Earlier quoted context omitted.
People can read the thread for themselves and decide. I see a quote tweet from Timnit with "I'm sick of this framing...listen to us", then misquoting what he said. Ignoring his replies and then following up with "I'm disengaging for my sanity...not worth my time...Maybe your colleagues will try to educate you..." etc. She attacks him (so he replies) and then she ignores him and talks down to him. I don't have a dog i…
Yes, you've made your position clear. I'm simply asking that you acknowledge that not everyone agrees with you, instead of making sweeping statements that no matter your opinion, Timnit was "obnoxious". You have your view of the events, I'm not trying to convince you to change it. I'm simply saying that other people disagree. No need to continue to try and justify yourself.
Of course - there will almost always be some amount of people that disagree with any position.
That doesn’t make all positions equally valid.
Stating that others disagree seems like a banality?
Obviously this is the case, just look at this thread and Twitter.
I just think they’re wrong.
I think attempting to explain why I think the way I do is kind of the point of the discussion. If I can’t justify it then I’d want to change my mind.
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that this is not the first time they engaged on this type of topic, and Yann has a history of ignoring other people who brought up similar criticisms to him (at conferences, etc.) At some point you lose the assumption of good faith, and deserve to be called out for refusing to learn. For what it's worth, I'm well aware of who Yann is, and was at the time as well. That doesn't make him immune to be…
I lost the assumption of good faith already in her first tweet, in particular >You can’t just reduce harms caused by ML to dataset bias. She's already attacking a strawman right there. Yann did not deny any harms caused by ML.
Nor did Timnit claim that he was. Her disagreement was about the causes of harms, not the existence of resulting harms.
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a research institute, it's a division in a for profit global corporation. I'm frankly disgusted that people who call themselves researchers of the humanities go work in this sort of obvious PR stunt of an "institute".
If you're hired by a private company to do academic work, it may often be reasonable to expect academic norms to apply. I'm not sure why you're disgusted by the idea that people might take jobs at Google, who do quite serious work around AI.
I agree that it is a perfectly reasonable expectation to have, however there is no notion of a tenure in a private company. To me that is a pretty fundamental distinction (with far reaching consequences) that people often overlook.
Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
#710It 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…
> while a member of Gebru's team
I have a hard time taking someone who looks like that seriously. Says a lot about her and her team.