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We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

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Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#251

Post by totony »

akie wrote: post #230
mikaeluman wrote: post #219

The problem I find with this has much to do with character. I will not comment on the research (because I do not know the field) but rather comment on why character matters and why motivation is important. Having read her email and tweets; it is quite clear that she is as much a political activist for a far-left “woke” interpretation of the world that I view as of immediate threat to our way of living, democracy and…

> a far-left “woke” interpretation of the world that I view as of immediate threat to our way of living, democracy and free speech. WTF dude. The core argument as to what you say is a "woke" interpretation of the world is to reshape the world in such a way that inherent privilege (for example being rich, being white, being male) does not completely predetermine anyone's outcomes. So that you can still "make it" even…

Both you and the parent invite flamewar. IMO the parent has a good point even if you remove this from what he said.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#252

Post by e_proxus »

rualca wrote: post #170
einarfd wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>-- Has she calculated the oposite alternatives? People driving to libraries, to search for something? Driving to the library, that is the alternative to training these models, really? > -- 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. If you had a model trained on a large…

> It seems to me that it would be impossible to do any social science research, and specifically any research on racism. With this kind of attitude. I think this sort of veiled personal attack resorting to baseless extrapolation is not a productive line of public discourse. You should take a step back and think about a) the field of study, b) how the main argument completely ignores the basis of said technical field…

> I think this sort of veiled personal attack resorting to baseless extrapolation is not a productive line of public discourse.

As opposed to the more direct “approach” in the parent post?

> Ok, so basically she is a bullshit social engineer, masquerading as an 'AI ethics researcher'

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#253

Post by lsiebert »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #220
lsiebert wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't read her paper, just an article about it. We can't read it, because google won't let us. That you don't see that as a problem is a little concerning.

The article we are using as reference is a summary of her paper and is literally titled “we read [her] paper” from MIT Technology Review. What do you suggest might the article be getting wrong about her paper? Or are you suggesting that the information contained about the paper in the article is inherently invalid and should be ignored altogether?

I'm saying that saying her paper was "light in technical substance" when we haven't read it is problematic. Any article such as this is going to be light on technical substance in comparison to the paper itself.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#254

Post by mustuhfa »

threeseed wrote: post #240
mustuhfa wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about her toxic behavior? Do you dispute that?

Toxic is an inflammatory and unnecessary word to use when no-one is privy to the actual facts.

Have you read the exchange with Lecun? That is fact and it is Toxic. So its not unnecessary or imflammatory

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#255

Post by bartread »

threeseed wrote: post #217
bartread wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timnit also shared a number of tweets, which you can easily access via the one you referenced, where she quotes from the email that Google sent her in response to her ultimatum. They accepted her resignation and brought her finish date forward. They cited her message to the brain group as reason for doing so (without the resignation I suspect she may have faced some disciplinary action, though whether it would have g…

No-one knows fully without seeing her employment contract. But having worked at many companies similar to Google in similar roles it is not normal for (a) contracts to not have notice periods and (b) for companies to not honour them. And IP-flight risk is a concern for many roles but it's typically handled through legal channels as we've seen with Uber.

> it is not normal for (a) contracts to not have notice periods and (b) for companies to not honour them.

Nobody's talking about the contract not having a notice period, much less about not honouring the notice period. I'm talking about (metaphorically these days) getting you out of the building and stopping you from potentially causing damage.

I'm not sure about the US but here in the UK your notice period will still be honoured because you will receive the salary you would have received had you continued to work through that notice period even though you are no longer able to do any work for the company (i.e., "gardening leave" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_leave).

I don't know what Google's severance policies are, and particularly with regard to remuneration for severence period (they will certainly vary by country/region though), so this situation might be different. Nobody's explicitly said whether or not Timnit will be paid some standard notice period (though reference is made to her final paycheque in the email she quotes where her resignation is accepted). No doubt an organisation as large and complex as Google has some policy that covers these circumstances that they will follow.

As I say, here in the UK, if somebody's resigned it's perfectly OK to ask them to stop working before their notice period is up (which might include revoking access to email and other company systems), as long as you pay them for the whole notice period. Doing work on behalf of the company and getting paid are two separate issues under these circumstances.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#256

Post by tmotwu »

mustuhfa wrote: post #250
lsiebert wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If her behavior is "toxic", who has it harmed?

Have you read her exchange with Lecun and the impact it had? Edit - Also, if her behavior online is like that, imagine what its like inside Google? Have you thought about that? Clearly her email to the brain group was an issue here, i wonder how it compared to her exchange with lecun? One final edit, even her co-authors were not ready for publishing the paper (per article), so why is the reason of censorship, supress…

Given that she seems relatively popular within Brain - more importantly her collaborators and direct manager, why should we assume she fostered a toxic work environment with those around her? More like, it appears the people who wanted her out were leadership and a set of anonymous PR/IP reviewers she does not know.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#257

Post by cepth »

bzb6 wrote: post #246
threeseed wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her work on identifying bias in facial recognition has won quite a number of awards. Ground-breaking might be a strong word but it does move the industry forward.

Awards given by leftist organisations such as VentureBeat to leftist activists are not really worth much.

The paper referenced ("Gender shades: Intersectional accuracy disparities in commercial gender classification") has been cited 1000+ times per her Google Scholar page (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lemnAcwAAAAJ). For a 2-year old paper, this is easily a top 1% most cited paper.

Take for example a retrospective look at 2017 NeurIPS papers done in 2019 (https://archive.is/wip/77YrB).

You can disagree with how she and/or Google has handled this whole situation, but please do not denigrate work that has been cited (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&cites=14954...) by papers accepted at the most competitive/prestigious ML conferences.

EDIT: I also do not see how in good faith you can say that VentureBeat, a company who makes the bulk of its revenue from running conferences catering to C-suite execs who can shell out thousands of dollars for a ticket, is "leftist".

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#258

Post by CyberRabbi »

lsiebert wrote: post #253
CyberRabbi wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article we are using as reference is a summary of her paper and is literally titled “we read [her] paper” from MIT Technology Review. What do you suggest might the article be getting wrong about her paper? Or are you suggesting that the information contained about the paper in the article is inherently invalid and should be ignored altogether?

I'm saying that saying her paper was "light in technical substance" when we haven't read it is problematic. Any article such as this is going to be light on technical substance in comparison to the paper itself.

The article states her paper focused on the dangers of large language models: “Environmental and financial costs,” “Massive data, inscrutable models,” and “Research opportunity costs.”

The dangers of large language models is an interesting topic but it’s not AI research and it doesn’t advance the state of the art of AI.

When it comes to technical substance in the field of AI, her paper is indeed lacking in that unless the article completely failed to mention something that would directly qualify as original AI research.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#259

Post by viktorcode »

bartread wrote: post #158

Good grief - this terrible clickbaity headline writing: "We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says" The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she…

> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google.

We all would love to see an evidence of it.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#260

Post by e_proxus »

jskajakzkjx wrote: post #148
ardit33 wrote: post #125

Ok, so basically she is a bullshit social engineer, masquerading as an 'AI ethics researcher' "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 i…

I think you’re making a weaker version of this argument than you need to, because you’re framing it in terms that oppose the politics of half of the public, when you really only need to argue against a much more specific set of ideas. For example: > 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 censu…

If you see AI as a technological amplifier, it could backfire the other way around. I.e. that the status quo is kept longer than necessary because it is so baked into the technology itself, not only the people who wield it.

I think it is precisely for these reasons this debate is so important, because it is truly not a clear cut improvement in my opinion.

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