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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#861

Post by kspacewalk2 »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #689
nwallin wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the message, it's the tone. There's a big difference between offering constructive criticism and being a condescending prick. > You can disagree with that reasoning (although you'd be wrong). What you can't do, as a leader in AI, is to pretend to have never heard of it, or that it is so obviously wrong that it warrants no reply whatsoever. There's a third option. You can just decide to not engage with the co…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing

Yes, tone matters, regardless of your gender. A prerequisite for a mature adult conversation is for you to quit being hostile to me from the get-go.

Am I saying something controversial or micro-aggressive here? So be it.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#862

Post by kspacewalk2 »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #856
rubatuga wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Yann said about data bias is a fact. He wasn’t dismissing your concerns nor distracting from it. A lot of people tried to extrapolate what Yann meant, but from the way I see it, if more people learn about the cause of this racial bias, the more people will be inclined to use fairer and diverse datasets in their future ML research.

"It's December" is also a fact. He chose to mention a different one. Why, if not as an explanation / excuse for the model's behaviour? Every practitioner already knows that these models behave according to the data they are trained on. The general public has no use for this explanation because they aren't the one deciding on the training data. So the only practical purpose is to offer some superficial causal mechanis…

What does that mean? What is an AI researcher to do differently? Put their academic life on pause and wait for more unbiased data?

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#863

Post by dv_dt »

tehjoker wrote: post #53
dv_dt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think worker cooperatives could also be a pressure for material change industry wide, and specifically in the tech industry I suspect that's more attainable than for workers of many other industries.

I agree. I think one day I will be interested in organizing a tech cooperative. I'm not quite ready to make the jump though.

I'm in a similar place. I think the key is just getting some initial cash flow started to sustain an organic growth path.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#864

Post by [deleted] »

SummerlyMars wrote: post #849
DoreenMichele wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the answers to that. I've been on Hacker News over 11 years. I would like to think I've been building bridges, but it seems like nothing I do is ever enough to reassure people I'm not some SJW Feminazi here to just piss on the guys and let them know what misogynistic assholes they are and it gets hard to keep trying when most of the community has watched me starve for years and openly told me "Not my pro…

For what it's worth, I think your contributions are important and you're a valuable member of this community. You've got a different perspective from many of the users of this site, and unlike many of them, your writing has actual _substance_. Regardless of whether or not I agree with what you say, if I notice your name on a comment, I know that I should pay attention to it.

[deleted]

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#865

Post by kspacewalk2 »

frongpik wrote: post #612
geofft wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, certainly it is and she undoubtedly knew that, but her job was guiding her employer to make ethical decisions / build an ethical framework. If you expect your ethicists to prioritize having a stable career and avoid potential career-limiting moves, I'm not sure how they're supposed to do their job. I would honestly be skeptical of a self-declared ethicist who's very good at climbing corporate ladders and has nev…

Her real job was to make google look good in the progressive circles. If she understood that, she would've made a stellar career.

Her real job is in AI activism, not AI academia. She understands that very well, and she understands that an acrimonious parting of ways with Google, combined with obligatory accusations of racist bias, is a reasonable career advancement step in the field of activism (though it may have been distracting and debilitating in the field of academia).

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#866

Post by dekhn »

joshuamorton wrote: post #857
dekhn wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and I believe that Yann knows 100X about the causes of harms than Timnit does- so lecturing him is just wasting everybody's time.

You've done a phd. Why on earth would you believe that someone, even an expert in the broad field, would know more about a particular topic than someone who specializes in that area is research? Do you think Yann knows 100X more about every area of ML then everyone else, or is it just fairness, accountability, and transparency that he happens to be more knowledgeable in than arguably a founder of the subfield?

It's pretty simple: he did made ML work before almost anybody else did, and kept working on during the deep network explosion, and is now running Facebook AI, which has to deal with these sorts of problems with practical solutions on a daily basis, with billions of users. That sort of daily experience counts so much that I would I would place him in the "knows 100X about every area of ML" (excluding rare subfields).

It's rare but I have encountered people outside my field who knew more than I did about my field, because of their daily experiences over decades, or their raw intelligence. Yann seems to have both.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#867

Post by prionassembly »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #861
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing

Yes, tone matters, regardless of your gender. A prerequisite for a mature adult conversation is for you to quit being hostile to me from the get-go. Am I saying something controversial or micro-aggressive here? So be it.

Then, this is a confrontational tone too.

I have the distinct impression that what they want is for discussions to become personal. Don't let them get to you.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#868

Post by joshuamorton »

dekhn wrote: post #866
joshuamorton wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've done a phd. Why on earth would you believe that someone, even an expert in the broad field, would know more about a particular topic than someone who specializes in that area is research? Do you think Yann knows 100X more about every area of ML then everyone else, or is it just fairness, accountability, and transparency that he happens to be more knowledgeable in than arguably a founder of the subfield?

It's pretty simple: he did made ML work before almost anybody else did, and kept working on during the deep network explosion, and is now running Facebook AI, which has to deal with these sorts of problems with practical solutions on a daily basis, with billions of users. That sort of daily experience counts so much that I would I would place him in the "knows 100X about every area of ML" (excluding rare subfields).…

So are you suggesting that Yann has more expertise on what you're working on now (which I know, and would consider to be an ML subfield in the same vein as Timnit's), and therefore would defer to his expertise when he says things that show nothing more than an undergraduate level of the topic?

Because I'm only a dilettante in the AI ethics space (and admittedly ML as a whole), and I can describe the flaws in Yann's reasoning. Blind deference of that level isn't rational.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#869

Post by dekhn »

joshuamorton wrote: post #868
dekhn wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple: he did made ML work before almost anybody else did, and kept working on during the deep network explosion, and is now running Facebook AI, which has to deal with these sorts of problems with practical solutions on a daily basis, with billions of users. That sort of daily experience counts so much that I would I would place him in the "knows 100X about every area of ML" (excluding rare subfields).…

So are you suggesting that Yann has more expertise on what you're working on now (which I know, and would consider to be an ML subfield in the same vein as Timnit's), and therefore would defer to his expertise when he says things that show nothing more than an undergraduate level of the topic? Because I'm only a dilettante in the AI ethics space (and admittedly ML as a whole), and I can describe the flaws in Yann's r…

I've argued with Yann about my field (we share a friend on facebook) and in that case, he did turn out to be technically correct.

I don't agree with your assessment of his "Reasoning".

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