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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

#311

Post by dash2 »

bzb6 wrote: post #237
saagarjha wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am honestly disappointed to see this kind of response at the top of comments here. Every time we have some sort of social issue come up people here come in to pick apart the person involved, and I think it’s one of the bigger reasons why some maintain a generally negative view of Hacker News. Can you imagine being Timnit and stopping by this thread, where the top comment, in colorful language, reduces you to a soci…

> I think it’s one of the bigger reasons why some maintain a generally negative view of Hacker News. Twitter already exists, we don’t need another place online to spend all day spreading false positivity.

The issue isn’t false positivity. It’s clear argument, politeness, precision and a willingness to assume the best of your interlocutor.

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

#312

Post by tmotwu »

mustuhfa wrote: post #293
tmotwu wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Can you link to your conclusions? Because thats not how I have seen it. She threatened to leave. If any of my team had an issue, and their response 'Do X, Y, X or ill leave', even if they are in the right, I would not align with them purely out of the fact that that is not the right behavior. You can still leave any company with out threats. Also we have not seen the email to the brain group. I wonder how that compar…

1. https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334877710477385728

2. How was LeCun harmed? As far as I'm concerned, he accepted the feedback. And just so we're clear on what happened then - Gebru was only one of many with qualifications who were aggressively critical because of his abdication of research responsibilities. I don't know why you're so focused on Gebru in particular.

3. Yes, if this was about performance, her direct manager who oversees 300 people would know.

4. So yes, glad to see we agree higher ups, who she likely has little to no interaction with to supposedly be exhausted of her behaviors, stepped in to get rid of her.

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

#313

Post by jeromenerf »

bzb6 wrote: post #271
cepth wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

"Left" and "right" carry little meaning when it comes to analyzing the divide between people. The "with/without money" bit is of a much higher order than the global "left/right" bit to me.

I don’t really care about the paper author’s fate, but it seems unsettling to me that she is discussed more than the paper itself.

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

#314

Post by pseudalopex »

bartread wrote: post #296
pseudalopex wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you. That's helpful to know and clearly illustrates the difference in practice across different countries (they wouldn't be able to do that in the UK unless it was a firing).

I think the difference is more phrasing than practice. Both countries require paying employees for the notice period when they resign. That's why people are saying she was fired.

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

#315

Post by throwaway74453 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #309
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…

Your feelings are justified. I felt the same way as you two days ago. You might be interested to know that I’ve changed my mind. The reasons are documented here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25308233 Basically, every one of those arguments evaporates when you dig into the details. She was doing her job. The paper was anodyne and perhaps even boring. She was rightfully pissed off that some middle manager was t…

Re the existence of an internal review (tl;dr: it definitely does exist!): A Google employee here who's actually published research there. There definitely IS an internal review and an approval process and every single paper I have published while there had to go through it. Everyone I knew had to submit for an internal review well in advance and I personally couldn't even submit to a conference review once because we only asked for the internal review 3 days in advance, which wasn't enough time. My understanding was that everyone around me was adhering to this.

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

#317

Post by jeromenerf »

bzb6 wrote: post #237
saagarjha wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am honestly disappointed to see this kind of response at the top of comments here. Every time we have some sort of social issue come up people here come in to pick apart the person involved, and I think it’s one of the bigger reasons why some maintain a generally negative view of Hacker News. Can you imagine being Timnit and stopping by this thread, where the top comment, in colorful language, reduces you to a soci…

> I think it’s one of the bigger reasons why some maintain a generally negative view of Hacker News. Twitter already exists, we don’t need another place online to spend all day spreading false positivity.

It was my impression that Twitter was mostly about spreading false negativity. Anyway, I would prefer we discuss the content of the paper and what it implies for large models.

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

#318

Post by throwaway74453 »

e_proxus wrote: post #272
mustuhfa wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there are links to the tweets in this article: https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...

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

#319

Post by dash2 »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #249
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…

> This is turning true ai research into a masquerade to push certain political agendas. Spot on. Naive scientism is used as cloak to advance political agendas, instead of searching for truth: "When a domain becomes respected source of Truth, there is incentive for hijackers. There is a huge window of opportunity (from decades to centuries) until the public opinion figures it out. Many (not all) still trust Harvard cr…

Calling Stephen Pinker a fraud is way over-the-top. He’s published a large number of extremely serious papers, including the paper introducing the ngrams dataset you just linked to.

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

#320

Post by bonzini »

throwaway74453 wrote: post #315
sillysaurusx wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your feelings are justified. I felt the same way as you two days ago. You might be interested to know that I’ve changed my mind. The reasons are documented here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25308233 Basically, every one of those arguments evaporates when you dig into the details. She was doing her job. The paper was anodyne and perhaps even boring. She was rightfully pissed off that some middle manager was t…

Re the existence of an internal review (tl;dr: it definitely does exist!): A Google employee here who's actually published research there. There definitely IS an internal review and an approval process and every single paper I have published while there had to go through it. Everyone I knew had to submit for an internal review well in advance and I personally couldn't even submit to a conference review once because w…

The question is whether the review process vets the topic of the paper, the writing, the citations etc., or it's only a screening that avoids revealing company secrets.
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