541–550 of 683 posts
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I think we agree on the difficulty here. I believe the reverse is also true: if the person is fired for a legitimate, non-watchdog reason, they have an incentive to say the firing was due to them bring up privacy/ethics concerns.
believe Google vs believe a solitary worker (female, black, known political agenda)
Jeff Dean is a solitary worker (male, white, known political agenda).
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You should read some other ethical AI research. This is par for the course. We're still suffering talks about killer robots.
We already have drones with cameras, drones with guns, and drones that are autonomous. How long until someone combines these?
I did not read the paper (just like most people here), but by the title — “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” — it does not look like the CO2 emissions thing is the main topic of this research. BTW, "Stochastic Parrots" is a very descriptive name for the problem > Moreover, because the training datasets are so large, it’s hard to audit them to check for these embedded biases. “A me…
> BTW, "Stochastic Parrots" is a very descriptive name for the problem Meh, both parrots and language models are inferior to humans in producing language, but one is more useful than the other. And real parrots are also stochastic, like all living things.
I don't understand how living things are "stochasic". Can you please elaborate on the matter?
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Well, nothing in this story suggest they do. They might have an inconsistent review process, like pretty much most processes in these companies - from interviews to promotions. Let's see how many people follow her and leave Google Research due to their practices. My prediction is zero.
That’s the beauty of modern discrimination. You never come out and say you’re discriminating. Rather you just apply the rules selectively. An inconsistent process is the best best way to discriminate. My prediction is you will see some people leave Google due to this. Likely those who worked closest to her. Apple is already extending interest.
My understanding is she wrote a paper critical of certain aspects of Google's business.
They asked her to retract it for revisions because they didn't think it was fair to Google which believed it had made advancements relevant to her critiques.
She thought this review was unfair so she wrote an unprofessional message to an internal group and submitted an ultimatum/resignation. Which google accepted.
Do you believe that corporations generally accept ultimatums?
Do you believe the message she sent out would never be a fireable offense?
Do you believe she was let go because she was black or female?
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> With respect to this particular case of Timnit Gebru, it sounds like she was already on her way to being let go. This is just wild speculation and part of a frustrating pattern where all sorts of questionable behaviors by authorities are justified by other unrelated properties of the victims.
She's not a victim. She was an employee who sent in her resignation/ultimatum letter and then blasted an unprofessional message to a bunch of her colleagues. She is obviously doing good research, but I could also see why she wouldn't be a good fit for Google (or really any other large tech company). I really don't see why this isn't a win for everyone. She said she didn't want to work there under current conditions,…
The most interesting part of the story is the part that happened before this.
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You should read some other ethical AI research. This is par for the course. We're still suffering talks about killer robots.
We already have drones with cameras, drones with guns, and drones that are autonomous. How long until someone combines these?
https://www.defensenews.com/video/2019/05/31/watch-this-isra... :
Video: Watch this Israeli robot fire a Glock 9mm weapon
Israel’s General Robotics has demonstrated what it says is the world’s first operational armed robot, the DOGO. (Seth J. Frantzman/Staff)
Anyone else see the narrative on Twitter to be so much different than Reddit and hacker news? On reddit and hacker news I have never seen any unconditional support for Timmit. Even amongst those anti Google and broadly in support of her, there's no whole agreement with all of what Timmit says; the assertion of her story, the reasons why and the conclusions. that a. She was fired b. That she was fired because of sexis…
Hacker News is about pseudonymous discussion. Only a small percent of HN posters are building a brand name. Twitter is much more real-name based and personal brand-building focussed. Jumping in on a bandwagon to signal group membership in an in group can help brand-building. Going against the in group is potentially fatal to your brand. The risk/reward balance does not favor genuine discussion of a controversial topi…
What a fucked up world we live in.
Not totally on topic, but on threads about researchers, I see this trend that when we're talking about a male researcher we only mention the family name but when talking about a female researcher we're using mostly the first name. Case in point, at time of writing there are 26 mentions of "Timnit" vs 16 mentions of "Gebru" on this thread. I don't think there are bad intentions behind this, but it really comes off as…
- Outside media continues to refer to her as Timnit including NYTimes which affects HN users
- If someone’s name is Gorot Trzebiatowski (please forgive me if you have such a name), most people would go with Gorot because it is shorter and easier to pronounce / write. Subconsciously, these things happen.
You’re right - No need to assume malice where probably there isn’t. This is conspiratorial thinking - find some pattern of data that supports mainstream narrative and make conclusions from it. This is what QAnon conspirators do all day.
Although I’m curious about your motivation for analyzing this :-)
Anyone else see the narrative on Twitter to be so much different than Reddit and hacker news? On reddit and hacker news I have never seen any unconditional support for Timmit. Even amongst those anti Google and broadly in support of her, there's no whole agreement with all of what Timmit says; the assertion of her story, the reasons why and the conclusions. that a. She was fired b. That she was fired because of sexis…
Hacker News is about pseudonymous discussion. Only a small percent of HN posters are building a brand name. Twitter is much more real-name based and personal brand-building focussed. Jumping in on a bandwagon to signal group membership in an in group can help brand-building. Going against the in group is potentially fatal to your brand. The risk/reward balance does not favor genuine discussion of a controversial topi…
Also accounts here are not like on reddit. You gain power with accepted comments. That's the most echo'y power dynamic imaginable. If you don't play the old boy's game, you can't participate and shape the conversation.
So, HN, are you gonna give me voting rights or will you kill me, too?
> A version of Google’s language model, BERT, which underpins the company’s search engine, produced 1,438 pounds of CO2 equivalent in Strubell’s estimate So... they're saying it used about $100 worth of electricity. [ https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 ] [ https://www.statista.com/statistics/190680/us-industrial-con... ]
CO2 impact for stuff like this - we probably have bigger fish to fry.