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Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

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Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#301

Post by dwaltrip »

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.

How hard is it to answer the question or tell them that you would rather not answer? It doesn't sound very difficult.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#302

Post by lsaferite »

virgilp wrote: post #186
ogre_codes wrote: post #132

She quit. The reason she quit is legitimate, but it's pretty clear that she quit here. If you say "I quit unless...", and they don't agree to the conditions—you've quit. If I'm running a business, I certainly have no use for an employee who has quit under fairly unfriendly conditions. I definitely wouldn't want someone who has quit spending another month or so using corporate resources for what is now their own perso…

No, that's still "fired". Don't get me wrong, it's an entirely legitimate reason to fire someone - but one doesn't quit unless they actually submit the unconditional resignation. What she did was threaten to quit, and Google (rightfully, IMO) fired her as a consequence of that threat (plus previous email where she was advising colleagues to stop working on some company initiatives - that was very likely a preview of…

If one of my engineers emailed me saying they would quit unless I conceded to some set of demands then I would very likely have HR accept that resignation on the spot, terminate their access, and deal with any contractual separation concerns.

If you weren't serious about resigning, you shouldn't have made the threat.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#303

Post by lsaferite »

pseudalopex wrote: post #284
cheese_van wrote: post #127

I don't fully understand the controversy and so take neither side. However, as I started in IT in in 84, it is curious to me that workforce culture has changed so. I recall the dourly suited IBM guys, all in lockstep, sharing identities, so to speak. One's role was well understood, and conforming to that role -conduct, performance, behavior- was very circumscribed and universally understood. Criticizing one's employe…

Do you consider an internal mailing list a public square? Researchers are used to having more freedom. IBM didn't pretend to be egalitarian and fun. And part of the controversy is Google firing her but characterizing it as accepting her resignation.

Out of curiosity, if someone says "I quit unless you do X", and you reply with "Ok, I accept your resignation", has that person been fired?

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#304

Post by ceph_ »

ivalm wrote: post #257
whimsicalism wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was he laboring for free before that?

He was laboring with contracts that stipulated severance, which got paid out.

Getting fired for sexual harassment seems like an easy way to lose your severance package

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#305

Post by devy »

whimsicalism wrote: post #84
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

> Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote a book about this[1] in particular. A book about how toxic this is and how it needs to change, right? This small detail seems sort of missing from your comment.

Yes. I am just stating a fact. And do you see a change?

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#306

Post by JamesBarney »

whimsicalism wrote: post #295
JamesBarney wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am in a bubble where I mostly talk to college educated people and people who have educated themselves in a similar tradition or are well-read. Perhaps it is snobbish of me, but I am mostly okay with that bubble for discussion forums. > Conditioning on that type of person, who make up most people on HN, Reddit, and Twitter, HN seems like it is in a right-leaning bubble. If most of the people you talk to are colleg…

> you most definitely exist in a bubble Why am I getting so many comments like this - I am pretty explicitly stating that I am aware that I am in a "bubble", my social circle isn't perfectly representative of America. That said, I think that restricting the forums I frequent to one's with primarily people who are well educated is a defensible practice. My claim is this: among the sort of forums where people are actua…

> My claim is this: among the sort of forums where people are actually having discussions about Timnit Gebru's firings (ie. highly educated crowds of people who pay attention to the goings ons in AI ethics, Google, etc.), HN skews right-leaning.

There are two groups of people who are interested in this firing. People who are very interested in race and race relations. These people skew extremely left wing.

And people who are interested in technology, ai and machine learning who are probably center left.

The machine learning subreddit and hacker news are both part of this second group and only look like it's skews right leaning because the other discussion skew so far left leaning.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#307

Post by kenjackson »

akarma wrote: post #255
dvtrn wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't it reasonable to fire someone for dragging other employees into a personal dispute with the person's manager? It'd be acceptable if it's a relevant party, like your skip or your manager's skip, even if it would anger your direct manager. This, however, is entirely different. It's venting your frustration to a large group of coworkers. It takes away from productivity as a whole, and is socially inappropriate. I…

> Isn't it reasonable to fire someone for dragging other employees into a personal dispute with the person's manager?

Microsoft last year had a similar thing, but related to sexual harassment [0]. I've never heard anyone fired as a result of airing their grievances. And to the contrary it sounds like, at least to the public media, they really tried to embrace and discuss what was at the heart of these encounters.

There's a problem at Google, and I don't think they solved it by firing this researcher.

[0] https://hub.packtpub.com/microsofts-metoo-reckoning-female-e...

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#308

Post by pseudalopex »

lsaferite wrote: post #303
pseudalopex wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider an internal mailing list a public square? Researchers are used to having more freedom. IBM didn't pretend to be egalitarian and fun. And part of the controversy is Google firing her but characterizing it as accepting her resignation.

Out of curiosity, if someone says "I quit unless you do X", and you reply with "Ok, I accept your resignation", has that person been fired?

Someone has been fired if they give notice and you tell them their employment is terminated immediately because they sent an unprofessional email.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#309

Post by laretluval »

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.

Conferences of this kind would not allow major revisions unless they were requested by the conference's reviewers.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#310

Post by prionassembly »

whimsicalism wrote: post #299
prionassembly wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Gebru is a successful "scholar" as far as the credentials game goes; I don't presume to have anything to teach her. Again: back up your assertions or they are worthless. I'm reading her papers and have also read many of the authors you are mentioning, there is very little in common. > Are we sure calling something "common-sense ethics" is a common-sense proposition? Are we comfortable deriving this Ought from that…

You're starting to sound like you're writing in good faith.

I'm not proposing a critique of her work. What I've found on arXiv reads like standard fare for its genre. Hotelling famously joined an early seminar on linear programming with Dantzig only to interject "... but the world is nonlinear!" That's not what I'm out to do -- not with this particular researcher, nor with its proxies on twitter and HN.

The scenario I'm looking at is one where the polarities are not left versus right or woke versus straight, but Humanities versus STEM. If people are to reject her kind of work -- and I'll be glad if they do, even if I'm not really willing to press them in that rejection with a proper "critique" -- then they could walk away burned by theory and postmodernism and all such crap. I'm proposing an entirely different path, or a space of different paths even.

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