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Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

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Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#231

Post by athms »

harrisonjackson wrote: post #94
whimsicalism wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't "accept someone's resignation" and then add terms to it and actually "resign" them a little sooner than they were going to resign. That's called firing.

That's exactly what a lot of companies do when someone gives 2 weeks notice. Send them home right away and pay them for the 2 weeks so you can keep them from filing unemployment and have them on the hook for any exit interview / handoff questions etc. They always want you to sign "something" as part of the process, too.

>you can keep them from filing unemployment

You cannot file for unemployment aid if you resign or are terminated for cause. You can only get assistance if your termination is the result of your position being eliminated, otherwise known as a reduction in force. This is valid in California and I believe true in every other state in the US.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#232

Post by prionassembly »

athms wrote: post #225
prionassembly wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we evaluating her as a researcher or as an activist? I’ve read some of her research (that’s on arxiv) and it’s... not on the level that “Google AI researcher” implies. It’s good that they hire from the Humanities, but we tend to smush all academics as if they all had equal rigor and value. Maybe she’s a great activist. Or a great cook. Being it that I’m not into activism, I can’t judge that. ---- Edit: I have to…

>It’s good that they hire from the Humanities... Gebru has a BS and MS in electrical engineering, and a PhD in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence; all from Stanford. After receiving her MS, she worked at Apple's hardware engineering group. After her PhD, she worked Microsoft's AI research lab.

That's... surprising. I've read (really read) a handful of her papers on arxiv, and the only that isn't a gooey Problematic Studies fondue has ten coauthors (with her in 5th or 6th place). She really has the lingo down pat.

Maybe the problem is precisely that they didn't actually hire from the Humanities? Although the cynic in me thinks they just hired someone with a "SJW" discourse rather than find themselves criticized for their market strategy -- whether their use of their monopoly power is ethical.

As it stands it really sounds like they got someone to offer Yann LeCun as a scapegoat for AI products (Amazon Rekognition is infamous); these services then serve as scapegoats for police departments, which...

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#233

Post by whimsicalism »

prionassembly wrote: post #82
minikites wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time a marginalized group gained rights by asking politely?

Are we evaluating her as a researcher or as an activist? I’ve read some of her research (that’s on arxiv) and it’s... not on the level that “Google AI researcher” implies. It’s good that they hire from the Humanities, but we tend to smush all academics as if they all had equal rigor and value. Maybe she’s a great activist. Or a great cook. Being it that I’m not into activism, I can’t judge that. ---- Edit: I have to…

> Are we evaluating her as a researcher or as an activist?

I honestly don't know how to take this comment.

Are you comparing her work to cultural theorists like Baudrillard, etc.? Because a brief read through her papers and they seem to be dealing with common-sense ethical concepts, not French social critique.

Otherwise, this comment is just odd - no real specific criticism of her body of work except to suggest that it is less good than what you'd expect from a "Google AI researcher".

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#234

Post by jeffbee »

whimsicalism wrote: post #227
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even amidst of world wide protests people don’t hear our voices and try to learn from us, they assume they’re experts in everything. Let us lead her and you follow. Just listen. She says talking down to an actual expert in ML who gave an opinion on ML

Unclear what the usage of "actual expert" means in the context of an AI ethics question, when Timnit is an "actual expert" in AI ethics. I can see how this would get frustrating fast if your opinion is held among many Google engineers.

"Ethics" does not really encompass the topic. The topic was that a net trained mostly on white people's faces upsamples a downsampled photo of a half-black man (Barack Obama) into a generic white face. LeCun's point is this is no surprise. If you trained it on leopards, it would upsample pixelated human faces into leopard faces instead. LeCun is an expert on how these nets work.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#235

Post by joshuamorton »

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.

I think your sounds ask her actual reports what they think of her management (hint: essentially all of them have said "she's the best manager I've ever had" or the equivalent in the past week).

If you work in an area that is written off, you need a strong advocate, and from everything I've seen, she was that strong advocate both for herself and for those who reported to her.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#236

Post by dvtrn »

akarma wrote: post #229
dvtrn wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still seems reasonable to fire anyone who sends such a message to their colleagues rather than working through the office's politics more quietly Can you unpack this a bit? Several employers, past and present have encouraged employees to communicate and attempt to resolve conflicts (presumably, maybe ostensibly, giving them opportunities to work it out as adults and professionals) amongst employees first as the fi…

> In fact, current employer has this as a point of policy for interpersonal conflicts barring severe enough circumstances where a reasonable person would say "yes this requires intervention from on high". I completely agree with you, but what happened here was that this manager sent this email to a large group of employees, not the specific employees she had the issue with (which would be fine!). This email wasn't an…

And so then, this is immediately fireable? Not knowing Google's policy for corrective management, I then go back to my original question and taking in your response, why would it be reasonable to fire an individual over this?

or

Is it perhaps in fact more reasonable to fire them using this and other behavioral or disciplinary incidents? Of which-I must say, in terms this Googler, none of us are privy to

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#237

Post by joshuamorton »

jeffbee wrote: post #234
whimsicalism wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unclear what the usage of "actual expert" means in the context of an AI ethics question, when Timnit is an "actual expert" in AI ethics. I can see how this would get frustrating fast if your opinion is held among many Google engineers.

"Ethics" does not really encompass the topic. The topic was that a net trained mostly on white people's faces upsamples a downsampled photo of a half-black man (Barack Obama) into a generic white face. LeCun's point is this is no surprise. If you trained it on leopards, it would upsample pixelated human faces into leopard faces instead. LeCun is an expert on how these nets work.

And nowhere did Timnit disagree that the cause he identified was a cause of bias in the system. Her contention is that there are others, and reducing the problem to just "get better datatsets" is a bad idea (and a way for researchers to abdicate responsibility).

To use an example that comes up: do we solve the ethical qualms of a system that predicts incarceration rate based on facial structure by getting a better dataset? Is it even ethical to attain such a "better" dataset, what does "better" even mean in the context?

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#238

Post by prionassembly »

whimsicalism wrote: post #233
prionassembly wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we evaluating her as a researcher or as an activist? I’ve read some of her research (that’s on arxiv) and it’s... not on the level that “Google AI researcher” implies. It’s good that they hire from the Humanities, but we tend to smush all academics as if they all had equal rigor and value. Maybe she’s a great activist. Or a great cook. Being it that I’m not into activism, I can’t judge that. ---- Edit: I have to…

> Are we evaluating her as a researcher or as an activist? I honestly don't know how to take this comment. Are you comparing her work to cultural theorists like Baudrillard, etc.? Because a brief read through her papers and they seem to be dealing with common-sense ethical concepts, not French social critique. Otherwise, this comment is just odd - no real specific criticism of her body of work except to suggest that…

I'm suggesting that HN readers who are upvoting my comments familiarize themselves with these authors.

Gebru is a successful "scholar" as far as the credentials game goes; I don't presume to have anything to teach her.

Edit: Are we sure calling something "common-sense ethics" is a common-sense proposition? Are we comfortable deriving this Ought from that Is?

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#239

Post by notSupplied »

Certhas wrote: post #160
kenjackson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Also, to put the double standard here into context, HN comment threads always had plenty of people defending Linus Torvalds tone.

Communities are not monoliths. Otherwise, it would be incredibly easy to charge any sufficiently large community of blatant hypocrisy.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#240

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

whimsicalism wrote: post #221
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And plenty of people attacking him. Every Linus thread has a massive debate about him being an asshole. Just like in this thread there are plenty on each side. Where’s the double standard?

A quick look through a few of the last Linus threads and there is a lot more "taking his word as gospel" over calling him an asshole: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22005181

I was thinking threads from before his big "shit, i'm an asshole, sorry. gonna take time off" phase. Maybe I have a selective memory, but I'm remembering threads from those couple years before and after Susan Fowler and Uber's culture implosion. It felt like there was a shift in how the whole industry felt about brilliant assholes around then (thank god).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18000698

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083859

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16508921

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8415603

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2372096

I think the threads in articles specifically about Linus are better comparisons to this, rather than articles about computing that involve him. But, hey, folk like Torvalds and Gebru both really rub me the wrong way, so it's reasonable that I might be selectively remembering threads where HN said I'm right and that he's an asshole (and I did a lazy googling of "linus torvalds asshole site:news.ycombinator.com" which is biased too), so who knows.

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