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Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

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Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#31

Post by jseliger »

pinewurst wrote: post #3

I'm tired of FAANG "rallies" where the numerator is such a small percentage of the denominator. I bet one could get "hundreds" of Google employees to rally behind a flat earth and many more for the abolition of mayonnaise.

I was going to say the same thing: there appear to be 2 - 3 people quoted in tweets. That's a rally?

I do think there's a larger set of questions being asked right now, around how organizations deal with differing viewpoints among their constituents, and how constituents dissent: https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs....

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#32

Post by elefanten »

tmotwu wrote: post #18

It is unfortunate that way too many commenters on a prior threads dismissed her as a some twitter personality and trivialized her body of work in spite of the fact that she is well regarded and reputable in the ML community. It's becoming clear a rising number of her colleagues are in support of what she was seeking to publish. A reviewer on reddit mentioned the authors have plenty of time to make revisions if there…

Body of work aside, she absolutely is an aggressive-ranging-into-toxic Twitter personality and a very strident proponent of a divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#34

Post by baccheion »

They've been cycling BS at least 10 years now since I left. Some should face the inescapable truth: no one cares. Another year and it's the same BS without change. As is the plan.

At the advent of anything, it won't matter. They'll just be some place.

People want to work there still? Separate from just wanting to work (who wants to be unemployed)? Why? It was stupid to be that way as far back as 2003, as they had already IPO'd by then. Stupid like an idiot trying to buy once/since a stock started to surge upward. Stupid. Anything after is in a class by itself.

I wonder how they are viewed among young people now. Both college students and those with 2 or so years of experience. Hmmm..

Maybe it's still the same.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#35

Post by ejanus »

king_magic wrote: post #4

After reading everything that has come out (e.g. her email) and her history of highly toxic Twitter behavior, I honestly can't blame Google for accepting her resignation (she was not fired).

I stand with you. This is Google's best decision this week. Workplace should remain workplace and should not be turned into political arena.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#36

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

marricks wrote: post #13
king_magic wrote: post #4

After reading everything that has come out (e.g. her email) and her history of highly toxic Twitter behavior, I honestly can't blame Google for accepting her resignation (she was not fired).

I mean, Google spends billions on lobbying and PR, so if you heard anything new and bad about her in the past day or two you gotta wonder. Her job involves ethics, if you're not stirring the pot a bit you're probably not doing ethics and just acting as PR for your company? *Also, while my reply is source/fact free your comment is as well, so I think they're both reasonably at the same level.

She’s made the front page here before for her Twitter behavior, long before google would have reason to do any conspiracy theory stuff. If anything, when that was news they had the opposite incentive.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#37

Post by contemporary343 »

Google (and Google Brain in particular) benefited immensely from Gebru's work, and her being affiliated with them. This can be seen in how often they (including Jeff Dean) pointed to her work to show they were taking questions of fairness and bias in AI algorithms seriously.

The flip side is that you have to respect the researcher, who frankly has more credibility than you do as an organization in this space.

Even to corporate researchers, demanding (through an HR procedure? bizarre) the researchers retract a paper without a discussion or an opportunity to revise it (which is still possible since the paper is only in review!) is highly unusual. To do that to a researcher whose work you loudly (and seemingly proudly) advertise, is insulting to them and the broader team they hired. And to do it over not citing literature? Unheard of and clearly indicative of something else going on. This seems like some kind of turf war.

You can read the abstract of the paper in question here - it is incredibly anodyne, though obviously does take a critical view of Google Brain's work (BERT in particular); https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t...

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#38

Post by sitkack »

echelon wrote: post #2

Companies can't straddle the line. They're either going to have to go all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics, or they're going to have to clamp down hard like Brian Armstrong. Google needs to decide what it wants to be. Given its choices, I think it's clear what they want. They just need to say it. It'll help employees and potential employees know if they want to work there.

Most companies want to appear to have a diversity of people who look different but have the same opinions and viewpoints as the rest of the group.

What they should strive for is a diversity of backgrounds, viewpoints, experiences and have that process account for the differences in how those people arrived at where they currently are.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#40

Post by uponcoffee »

steve_g wrote: post #15

Does anyone have a link to the paper she was fired over? I've spent some time searching with no luck. I'd like to know what was technically controversial.

As i understand it, she was supposed to submit to google for an internal review a fews prior to externally publishing it. She simultaneously submitted and published it, and Google sought a retraction after internal review. She met that with an ultimatum with do X or I'll quit. They took that as a resignation (as Google wasn't going to do X), and accepted it.

I'm not fully informed about what she wanted, but I don't think it was particularly unreasonable, the controversy more has to do with headlines and spotlights about this person and her conduct/history in the past.

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