Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher • Hacker News Board

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#161

Post by jeffbee » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #111

actuator wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her spat against Yann LeCun felt very wrong to me. That is not how fellow academics/researchers should treat each other. Maybe Yann LeCun was wrong, the way she conveyed the message disregarding any knowledge he might have on this was definitely not civil. She could have chosen a different way to address the complaints here, not by getting overtly confrontational. Maybe the review group got it wrong, maybe they were…

I've tried to piece together the debate with LeCun, but I can't find anything she said that seemed all that bad. It seemed like, if anything, she just simply wouldn't let him off the hook. And it's very possible I missed several tweets that were really toxic...

Gebru did not engage LeCun in a reasoned debate. She said he should stop taking, listen to her and her allies (and only them). She said "Let us lead here and you follow" and "Just listen", essentially telling the inventor of convolutional neural nets that it was now his role to sit and shut up.

That's how woke Twitter works: you define the group of people who are allowed to speak as only you and your allies. You pursue the meta-argument whenever someone not in your group attempts to speak.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#162

Post by damnencryption » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

throwaway2245 wrote: post #140

devy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This above is very intolerable in Corporate America. First and foremost, she works for the corporation and get paid, no matter how great she is, she has to follow the corporate culture and norms or she won't be surviving in Corporate America. Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote a book about this[1] in particular. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24331490-leadership-bs

>she works for the corporation and get paid, no matter how great she is, she has to follow the corporate culture and norms Doesn't this cut both ways? Google employed her to critique the company's ethics; she is critiquing the company's ethics - as such, she is literally doing the job she was employed to do. If Google doesn't want that role to exist or wants a puppet to do it, why did Google employ her in the first p…

Same way google and big tech companies fund pro-privacy groups. The intent is not to have stronger privacy laws that doesn't benefit them.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#163

Post by throwaway2245 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

ccmcarey wrote: post #136

She put out ultimatums and said she'd resign if they were not met, and G accepted her resignation. That's not a firing.

The way you have phrased it makes it a firing not a resignation, in my mind.

"I will/would resign if" reserves her the right to resign; it does not have the same meaning as "I am resigning if"

Compare to e.g.: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/511062-trump-vaccine-o...

We can't take this ultimatum as a resignation.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#164

Post by JamesBarney » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #85

devy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This above is very intolerable in Corporate America. First and foremost, she works for the corporation and get paid, no matter how great she is, she has to follow the corporate culture and norms or she won't be surviving in Corporate America. Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote a book about this[1] in particular. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24331490-leadership-bs

>she has to follow the corporate culture and norms or she won't be surviving in Corporate America "Corporate culture" isn't fixed, the whole point is that it needs changing.

"Corporate culture" is a culture of bland, and empty niceties, with a veneer of politeness and it's 100% needed so that a large corporation can focus on getting things done without every interaction turning into twitter.

Hacker news also requires a certain amount of politeness in the way you speak and it's one of the many reasons the discourse is better than twitter.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#165

Post by cavisne » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

It's truly wild these extremists are trying to cancel Jeff Dean at this point.

If they succeed you should assume Google is dead, sell your stocks and backup your data.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#166

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

unix_fan wrote: post #23

From what I’ve seen, it’s a pretty clear case of toxic workplace behavior. I’m not sure why the headlines are trying to be sympathetic.

Because the article was written based primarily on Gebru's Twitter feed, which casts her in a sympathetic light. This is a common problem news organizations face these days; Twitter drama is an unreliable source, but it's so much faster than independent research that you almost have to use it sometimes.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#167

Post by infoseek12 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

tmotwu wrote: post #55

elefanten wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If she was truly removed for her abrasiveness, we would have a completely separate discussion entirely. What transpired, from both her disclosures and Google's leaderships response, has justifiably reigned in a lot of concern and skeptism from the broader research community.

Let’s be honest, Google knew this was going to blow up and they didn’t want to have a public conversation about whether she’s “abrasive”. Whether you agree or not with what Google did, it seems clear that they wanted to fire her for a while. They made the calculation that using this as a justification would allow them to get rid of her at a PR cost that was acceptable to them. None of the comments coming out of either side should be taken at face value, what’s being said is just window dressing and justification of the real motivations.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#168

Post by whimsicalism » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #157

srean wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The case being made in this thread is that that was how they got her, not why they fired her Conjecturing what could be the real reason, person A conjecturing why a person B does what he does (hates our freedom, for example) and why one should not take B's own explanation of his own actions -- these to me are an avoidable form of discourse. Nothing good comes of it other than an obligate outrage.

Well, refusing to consider the idea that someone might do something with more than zero layers of subtlety... would lead to falling for every trick anybody ever tries to play. ;) A more appropriate response would be to admit that it's not easy to tell the difference, and maybe, if the interlocutor cares enough, to do some research to determine whether or not it's still suspicious once the facts are known. One example…

> would lead to falling for every trick anybody ever tries to play

Welcome to engineers playing organizational politics.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#169

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

contemporary343 wrote: post #66

laretluval wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably there would have been time for discussion if the paper had not been submitted a day before the deadline.

There's still time for discussion! The paper's only in review and they would have had to make revisions anyway. I'd say it's the management that made an ultimatum to the research team.

Once you submit your paper it is visible to experts you probably know (or at least know of). The double blind process does not work when the subject matter, and writing style, and citations correspond closely to specific labs or researchers. You stake your reputation as well as that of your lab/company from the moment you submit.

I say this from personal experience, I once published last minute for a conference and was violently chewed out by my bosses because of things they disagreed with in the paper.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#170

Post by virgilp » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

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).

She was absolutely fired, her boss even admitted as much (paraphrasing, "we accept your resignation but can't agree to your timeline, termination is effective immediately"). TBH, given the behaviour (public email saying "stop working on what mgmt asks you to, it doesn't really matter!" and email to manager saying "do X,Y or I'll quit!") - the way this was handled is not discriminatory, it's what would happen to 99% of the employees. She was a star employee and thought it can't happen to her, but apparently she overstepped some boundaries.