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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

#331

Post by dash2 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #326
tomp wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your “social justice” cause(s) would be much better served if you didn’t make up problems where there are none (what’s the issue with “globalist”??) and didn’t project ill intent where there is none (the soap dispenser wasn’t “racist”, it was just “bad”). It’s just basic intellectual honesty, sorely missing in the SJW circles.

> what’s the issue with “globalist” It's a white-supremacist dog whistle for "jew": https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-how-did-the-term-gl... > the soap dispenser wasn’t “racist”, it was just “bad” For a person of color who wants to wash their hand and sees that it dispenses soap for white people but not for them it is yet another piece of everyday racism.

Globalist probably can be used as a dog-whistle, but we do need a word for people who support free trade, free migration, borderless finance etc. That’s a quite common position. Indeed, the Haaretz article you link to is considerably more ambiguous than just saying “globalism is a bad word and must be banned “.

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

#332

Post by dash2 »

mustuhfa wrote: post #238
lsiebert wrote: post #224

Ultimately this reads as straight censorship by Google. Or if not by Google, by Google employees, with the tacit approval of their higher ups. They didn't like the viewpoint she expressed, didn't like the criticisms she raised, so they blocked her (well her and 7 co-author's) paper. When she said that was unacceptable and stood her ground, they badmouthed her and fired her. You don't have to agree with the paper's cr…

This is utter nonsense. If you looked outside her twitter feed and at evidence, its clear she was fired because she was toxic. Her threat to leave was her own fault which allows google to move forward. Look at her interactions with respected people like lecun. She has issues with disagreeing with people. She may be qualified, she can have opinions, you can also be the best engineer. If you are an asshole when it come…

It is not clear at all. Nobody at Google has said that she was fired for being toxic. That’s your inference.

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

#333

Post by woj-tek »

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…

> She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given

I'm unsure whether "improvement" is the right synonym for "change" in this situation.

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

#334

Post by dash2 »

ethical-ai wrote: post #322

> Though Bender asked us not to publish the paper itself because the authors didn’t want such an early draft circulating online Should not you avoid submitting early drafts which are not good enough to be published yet?

No, it was submitted to a conference, that’s what they’re for. Not the same as submitting for publication.

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

#335

Post by jhowell »

enkid wrote: post #306
jhowell wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear all off the facts are not available, and likely never will be, experiences are subjective. It's also clear that before learning of this event, we had 0% knowledge of the situation. Between 0 and where we are now with both sides expressing their point of view to some degree, people on HN began making up their mind in the absence of complete information. There is no requirement or urgency that we come to som…

There are plenty of instances of "smart" people doing "dumb" things. The idea that there is only one intelligence without considering people have a lot of individual foibles due to experience, temperament, predisposition, and any number of other factors is really dangerous. It's that type of thinking that led to presidents who were former movie stars or real estate developers.

> The idea that there is only one intelligence without considering people have a lot of individual foibles due to experience, temperament, predisposition, and any number of other factors is really dangerous. It's that type of thinking that led to presidents who were former movie stars or real estate developers.

Or it doesn't and we victimize people with smaller PR budgets to present their perspective.

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

#336

Post by rualca »

gnomewascool wrote: post #239
rualca wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought that my comment was fitting to the tone of the text (...) Yes, that was one of the problems. > It is unclear to me what this means, is it arguing that studying bias in AI and specifically deep learning is not germane? Let me make it clear for you so that a) we are able to talk about things objectively, b) your options to continue using veiled personal attacks is curtailed. Either your goal is to model rea…

I'm not OP, but what is "real life"? In cases where some communities/countries have (to quote from the article) a "smaller linguistic footprint online", is trying to control for this a form of manipulation of society or a way to fix a bias? Can you actually choose a sampling measure without making some sort of value judgement?

> I'm not OP, but what is "real life"?

In the context of creating models, it's representative data collected from statistically significant observations of a population, for starters.

> In cases where some communities/countries have (to quote from the article) a "smaller linguistic footprint online", is trying to control for this a form of manipulation of society or a way to fix a bias?

In modelling there is no such thing as control. There's the input data and there's the model generated from input data.

If you are looking for a model that is expected to represent a property intrinsic to a specific community then you use data collected from that community to generate that model. That's it.

Models generalize, and reflect the norm. They are like that by design. That's their point.

If your plan is to have a model that does not reflect the input data but instead forces your biases regardless of the input data then your goal is not to model reality but to distort it to comply with your personal goals.

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

#337

Post by denkmoon »

lsiebert wrote: post #300
silveroriole wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a megafarm hires you to write papers for the Ethical Milk Production team, any modicum of social awareness will tell you that they don’t actually want you to write a paper about the ethics of animal products.

If you, a large corproation working in AI, hire a prominent and vocal AI ethicist, any modicum of awareness should tell you that they may actually have a sense of ethics.

Except corporations do not have awareness, because they are machines.

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

#338

Post by sillysaurusx »

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…

Thank you for speaking up! To be clear, there’s no question it exists. But multiple (admittedly former) google researchers have gone on record saying that this is meant to be a quick scan for trade secrets leakage, and nothing more than that. Certainly not some kind of academic integrity review. That’s what the journal reviewers are for.

The point of the scientific process is to be allowed to fail and to be mistaken. And the paper was pretty bland. Sure, she didn’t namedrop all relevant research over the last decade, but why demand a retraction? Especially when the reviewers posted on Reddit that there was a big edit window to make revisions. Adding a few more cites seems like “oh, why not throw in X?” then you both go out to lunch / email an updated version later that day. A retraction is basically “your last few months have been wasted,” right? I’d probably be upset too.

Thanks again for the datapoint about the 3 day window. It seems rather selective, but that’s standard for any bigco. I’m just having a hard time stomaching the idea that your ideas need to pass through some anonymous internal review panel where you don’t even know who’s judging you. Is that really what it’s like to be there? Seems strange.

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

#339

Post by hankchinaski »

I fail to understand how this is even a story worth covering. Sometime people forget you work FOR someone, who's already paying top dollars for your work. If your interests are not aligned with your employer you certainly have the right to walk away. You surely do not have the right to be seen as a beaten up dog when this was exactly what happens when you ignore feedback, rant and give ultimatums like you count more than anybody else. I am glad she was let go

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

#340

Post by pseudalopex »

IanCal wrote: post #299
threeseed wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only heard of unethical companies firing people immediately without honouring the notice period. It's definitely not common place and should not be encouraged except under severe circumstances e.g. violence, criminality etc.

Are they not being paid for their notice period? Usually the way this works is "gardening leave" where you're paid and are not supposed to come into work.

Her manager said "effective today". That means no gardening leave.
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