121–130 of 683 posts
Despite what both sides claim, IMHO papers like this are primarily PR, ideology, and politics, rather than science and technology. This is akin to a speech writer working for a politician, writing a piece that disagrees with the party platform, and refusing to fix it when asked.
Despite what both sides claim, IMHO papers like this are primarily PR, ideology, and politics, rather than science and technology. This is akin to a speech writer working for a politician, writing a piece that disagrees with the party platform, and refusing to fix it when asked.
And often it is a damn that need only break once. Corporate ethics as a whole seems contradictory. The only ethical rules which a company may obey in perpetuity are those that do not for long conflict with profit and those which are backed by effective laws.
Even when done with a positive intent, I fear creating positions such as this is begging for eventual corruption.
Despite what both sides claim, IMHO papers like this are primarily PR, ideology, and politics, rather than science and technology. This is akin to a speech writer working for a politician, writing a piece that disagrees with the party platform, and refusing to fix it when asked.
The response was to decline to meet and fire her.
It’s entirely plausible that the paper is bunk; however, when someone is willing to come down that hard to prevent an idea being published, I tend to err on the side of “worth finding out what”.
That's just outright false. She was terminated, effective immediately.
Does anyone else find themselves losing a lot of respect for Jeff Dean in all this?
"Gebru’s draft paper points out that the sheer resources required to build and sustain such large AI models means they tend to benefit wealthy organizations, while climate change hits marginalized communities hardest. “It is past time for researchers to prioritize energy efficiency and cost to reduce negative environmental impact and inequitable access to resources,” they write."
-- Has she calculated the opposite alternatives? What were the costs of the previous models? How about the alternative of not-having ai-backed search at all. Would worse results be actually worse energy wise? If you are not including the substitues/alternative costs it is just sloppy research, or just done purposely on bad faith.
"One is that shifts in language play an important role in social change; the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, for example, have tried to establish a new anti-sexist and anti-racist vocabulary. An AI model trained on vast swaths of the internet won’t be attuned to the nuances of this vocabulary and won’t produce or interpret language in line with these new cultural norms."
-- Ok, basically she is pissed as AI is picking normal language, that people use, and not using the vocabulary that is in vogue on certain political circles. Basically censure, and forced speech.
Why does google even bother at this point? It seems that certain circles just don't want to have positive constructive way, but it is becoming: "my way, or you are X", with "X" being whatever prerogative they will through at you.
I think social engineering b.s. should be kept as far away as possible from science. This is turning true ai research into a masquerade to push certain political agendas.
The threads so far on this ongoing story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25307167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25292386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445
Hi dang, I’ve recently noticed that this commonly occurs ie multiple relevant threads that make up the top 50 of HN over say a 72 hour period, all related or rifts on a similar discussion. Wondering if there is a way to group them as part of the same topic/submission? (thus saving you the manual work of posts like this). I appreciate this would (i) require a code change and (ii) would shift the HN model from individu…
Despite what both sides claim, IMHO papers like this are primarily PR, ideology, and politics, rather than science and technology. This is akin to a speech writer working for a politician, writing a piece that disagrees with the party platform, and refusing to fix it when asked.
She didn’t “refuse to fix it when asked”. She agreed with the proviso that she could have a meeting to figure out what she was and was not permitted to publish. The response was to decline to meet and fire her. It’s entirely plausible that the paper is bunk; however, when someone is willing to come down that hard to prevent an idea being published, I tend to err on the side of “worth finding out what”.
I think that is in dispute. Jeff Dean claims she did refuse to fix it.
> It’s entirely plausible that the paper is bunk; however, when someone is willing to come down that hard to prevent an idea being published, I tend to err on the side of “worth finding out what”
But they weren't trying to prevent the idea from being published. They certainly knew by firing her they'd give it far more attention than it would otherwise get. What they wanted was not to put their name on this idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Having not read any of this). Isn't Google committed to be net carbon neutral/negative? If so, does the claimed extra electricity usage matter?
The paper should have been probably focused on the title only, because the CO2 usage looks like a publicity stunt. She also didn't subtract the amount of CO2 saved by improved productivity by getting better search results.
It is like someone complaining that google map uses x, amount of energy, yet the old alternative (printing maps, and getting lost) was much worse CO2 wise.
This doesn't strike me as anything that needs to be buried. The energy argument is tenuous and at this point models use relatively little compute power. The language bias is a better tack but I don't think this is earth shattering to anyone. Most of the internet is from Western sources and some fraction of that is racist/prejudiced. I think this is obvious to anyone who has ever used the internet.
It sounds like it should be buried because it's clickbait headline generating fluff that only would get attention because of where the authors come from. And I say that after reading a summary that sounds like the authors had a positive opinion of the paper. Google (probably) wanted to bury it because many of those clickbait headlines would have been negative to google.
Despite what both sides claim, IMHO papers like this are primarily PR, ideology, and politics, rather than science and technology. This is akin to a speech writer working for a politician, writing a piece that disagrees with the party platform, and refusing to fix it when asked.