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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

#271

Post by bzb6 »

cepth wrote: post #257
bzb6 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

Are you really making the argument that people with money can’t be leftists? Do you know liberals are on average richer? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/economic-divide-in-the-us-is...

Most executives of tech and news companies would bend over backwards just to show how leftist they are in 2020.

(I’m only replying to the part of your comment that answers mine)

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

#272

Post by e_proxus »

mustuhfa wrote: post #254
threeseed wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you have any links to this discussion? I’m trying to verify the toxic claim and am having a hard time finding it on Twitter right now because of all the noise.

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

#273

Post by rualca »

zimpenfish wrote: post #241
rualca wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you accuse someone of pretending to be an "AI ethics researcher" (...) You would do well to work on your literacy and reading comprehension skills. To start off, be aware that "a bullshit social engineer masquerading as a AI research" does not, by any means, mean the author is "pretending to be an AI researcher".

Keen to understand what "masquerading as" is doing in that sentence if it's not meant to imply "pretending to be"?

> (...) if it's not meant to imply "pretending to be"?

It means "social engineering pretending to be AI research", doesn't it?

Think about it.

Look at the context. Look at the people involved. Look at the topic of the discussion.

And let's be honest for a second: do you personally believe that anyone would accuse an AI researcher who worked at Google of not being an AI researcher?

Literacy matters, and so does honest and well meaning interpretations of what someone actually did said.

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

#274

Post by viktorcode »

foota wrote: post #139
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…

Her previous papers look pretty serious to me, along with her resume. I see nothing to suggest she's not qualified. https://ai.stanford.edu/~tgebru/

She's a woman.

Misogyny clearly is a problem for many commenters here.

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

#275

Post by lsiebert »

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…

They were continuing to work on the paper for publication, which, if you've never written an academic paper, is a lengthy process. There's a heck of a difference between not being done and not wanting a rough draft circulating vs being asked to withdraw the paper entirely.

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

#276

Post by Macha »

angry_octet wrote: post #136
KingOfCoders wrote: post #112

See the other thread were one mentions that with reCaptcha Google learns that all cabs are yellow (and traffic lights hang over streets - they don't here). But I guess everyone only sees the blind spots of other people.

You're assuming that reCaptcha is training some Google algorithm. But in fact it has trained you -- to recognise US style dangly traffic lights, yellow school busses and cabs, pedestrian cross walks -- and this makes me wonder if reCaptcha does use the same image set for all different locations. Are people in Lagos, Pune and Tashkent routinely failing reCaptcha at higher rates because they don't watch US television?…

Even in Europe I sometimes find reCAPTCHA more difficult for being "too American". Maybe we're categorised as "close enough" and there are south American or African datasets but I suspect not.

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

#277

Post by tmotwu »

mustuhfa wrote: post #266
tmotwu wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Her behavior is clear evidence of how she interacts with people. You can be a brilliant jerk and still get along with some people. In a team environment however, there is no place for this. Her exchange with Lecun, her threatening words and many of the way she puts forward her arguments. Even if she was in the right here, she can easily deal with it without doing what she did here. So yes, there is more evidence for…

Again, I repeat, if her team had issues with her, her direct report would know and her team wouldn't be harping constant praise towards her.

The people who removed her are executives several skips above her. That is unusual.

You keep bringing up LeCun, but LeCun did not get harmed as you imagine - he only conceded to her point because she was frankly the expert in the topic of discussion and he finally acknowledged that.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by mindrunner »

Reading Jeff's email plus her comments on twitter doesn't give the full story.

It seems like

1. She did not give them the time required to vet through the paper or followed the processes, plus her email to everyone to stop work on other projects. 2. Google fired her immediately, which might have been different if she wasn't a POC.

This

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

#280

Post by pseudalopex »

bartread wrote: post #255
threeseed wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stil…

The effective date of a resignation is when the employee is officially no longer employed. Not when they're put on gardening leave. Google doesn't pay people past the effective date normally.
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