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Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

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Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#201

Post by JamesBarney »

kitsune_ wrote: post #95
jasonv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was something about the writing in her email that felt.. loaded and questionable without enough factual assertions to carry her point. In Jeff Dean's email, he made one point that could be pretty salient: she submitted the paper for approval right at deadline. If that's true, that is poorly handled. The ultimatum is easily a step too far. And all of this right before a vacation/holiday.

I mean the machiavellian interpretation looks like this to me: Google's AI in Ethics initiative is a PR exercise, similar to greenwashing and other models employed by big business. It fundamentally has to be, because large parts of the underlying business model at Google are based on unethical practices. By hiring researchers from underrepresented groups they additionally hoped to a) profit from the power imbalance o…

I think Google genuinely wants their AI to be better in most of the same ways the ethic researchers want it to be better. I think Google is more willing to compromise on having an ethical AI to meet other goals and priorities than the researchers. Google probably also expects researchers who are publishing papers critical of Google to highlights Google's efforts to mitigate those issues.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#202

Post by epinephrinios »

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…

She is just another toxic personality that is using her race (minority) as a free pass to bully colleagues.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#203

Post by apta »

jeffbee wrote: post #144
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.

Reading down the names, it is indeed the usual woke people who are chronically enraged on corp. G+ and mailing lists and whatever. There's also the person who kept harassing me on corp chat about whether I had a non-binary gender identity. I am so completely done with woke bullshit in the workplace.

Why not report them for their harassment? Honestly, corporations should step in and put an end to this woke bs.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#204

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

root_axis wrote: post #154
ralusek wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her particular type of toxicity is the only reason she remained employed for as long as she did.

What do you mean? Are you saying she was undeserving of the position based on her qualifications?

I think they mean that a brilliant asshole of a different type of assholery would have been fired much sooner. The fact that she’s qualified is separate.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#205

Post by whimsicalism »

jeffbee wrote: post #199
whimsicalism wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let us lead [here] (I'm assuming "her" was a typo) and you follow. Aggressive, sure, but also seems: a. reasonable for AI ethics experts to "lead" in issues surrounding AI ethics b. not the cardinal sin of discussion that it appears to be viewed as here. You'll see people here defending Linus or Elon Musk for saying objectively way worse stuff than this. Somehow Timnit is defined by this discussion, but Elon isn't…

OK, but imagine that you are the expert in your field and you have work for this person, who controls your career and compensation, who has a tendency to say that domain experts need to shut up and defer to her.

If the domain is AI ethics, then Yann is not a domain expert, she is. Indeed, it seems like this exact expansion of Yann's "domain" is what she is frustrated by, and you are playing exactly into it.

> the expert in your field and you have work for this person, who controls your career and compensation

Must be harder when your CEO boss has a tendency to call domain experts pedophiles, yet I see Musk praised frequently here.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#206

Post by JamesBarney »

defertoreptar wrote: post #71

I was wondering if anyone knew enough to clarify a couple of things from this part of Dean's letter: > Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted. There seems to be something between the lines here. How was it approved for submi…

Part of her demand/resignation/not resignation letter was asking to know who specifically gave what feedback. So she said she was given the feedback, but she didn't know who the feedback was from.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#208

Post by jeffbee »

apta wrote: post #203
jeffbee wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading down the names, it is indeed the usual woke people who are chronically enraged on corp. G+ and mailing lists and whatever. There's also the person who kept harassing me on corp chat about whether I had a non-binary gender identity. I am so completely done with woke bullshit in the workplace.

Why not report them for their harassment? Honestly, corporations should step in and put an end to this woke bs.

If you think it's a good move to complain to HR against the visible activists who have assigned themselves to a legally protected class, you don't understand this workplace.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#209

Post by free_rms »

pmoriarty wrote: post #122
manigandham wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those free passes ended years ago as can be seen by many high-profile removals and resignations (for both corporate policy and social pressure reasons).

"Those free passes ended years ago as can be seen by many high-profile removals and resignations (for both corporate policy and social pressure reasons)." Linus still has a job, AFAIK. So does Lennart Poettering. Both have plenty of defenders on HN. That's not to mention people like Peter Thiel and his fans.

Linus had like one outburst a year in between spending all day every day reading/writing emails.

And a bunch of them weren't actually hostile to his team, they just got taken out of context. He'd refer to a userspace program they had to keep from breaking as a "braindead abortion" or something and people would report it as if he said it to/about a kernel developer.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#210

Post by notahacker »

dmarchand90 wrote: post #118
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).

A subtle but important aspect of her complaint that I would like to point out is she offered to resign, but after some period X. I'm not sure if that was two weeks or a month. Instead, Google layed her off on the same day. Firing her much sooner than the date she requested seems really foolish on Google's side. Arguably, one of the primary reasons a profit-oriented company would hire someone for this kind of job is f…

The 'Google Ai ethicist resigns...' headlines wouldn't have been any better unless she was willing to sign a gag clause as a condition of getting her preferred leaving date (which sounds highly unlikely) and I doubt they had any particular need to pay her to finish anything off or hand over to fellow staff. Ultimately if she felt strongly enough about something to indicate she would leave if they didn't budge and they felt strongly enough about not budging to let her go then the finishing date is moot.

Edit: also you put the stuff about 'agreeing a leaving date' instead of 'I will quit' in your ultimatum to make it clear that you're dead serious about leaving and are trying to be reasonable rather than threatening, not because you need next month's paycheque.

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