Kicking out (or having resign) an AI researcher is a lot less costly in PR terms than having a large scale AI fail like the one Google experienced when their photo software started identifying black people as monkeys in 2015. Gebru is a fuse that just went pop, and can now be replaced with a new one quite easily.
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
#622I 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…
The paper appears to be here: https://gofile.io/d/WfcxoF (source: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...)
Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's look at the dictionary, shall we? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/masquerade "an action or appearance that is mere disguise or show" As in social engineering masquerading as AI research? Honestly, is there any room for doubt at this stage? I don't expect honest and well-meaning people to continue insisting on this at this point. It feels that these attempts to distort what was said are simply attempt…
> If you take a step back and read the snippet you cherry-picked Cherry-picked? It's literally the first sentence, the central thesis of OP's entire "argument". If they can't get that down on paper correctly, they're not worth taking seriously. > You would do well to work on your literacy and reading comprehension skills. Ascribing unsubstantiated sentiments to someone's post in lieu of what they actually said doesn'…
>If they can't get that down on paper correctly, they're not worth taking seriously.
Amusingly, the OP got shirty at someone* further down this thread for calling them names, but with an unfortunate textual blunder which exposed the hypocrisy of their own name calling (not to mention total lack of self awareness).
I pointed this out but got downvoted to oblivion of course. Classic goose / gander politics.
* (and rightly so btw, that kind of conduct has no place on HN)
Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
She didn't offer to resign immediately. Her manager explicitly rejected her actual offer and imposed new terms as punishment for her email to the group.
If the text Jeff Dean wrote below is overwhelmingly true, I'd agree that she resigned rather than was fired. I suspect that it is overwhelmingly true as I'm fairly sure that Google legal would have reviewed it and ensured they didn't say anything falsifiable and likely that this paragraph is entirely true. > Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue worki…
Notice he doesn't say she resigned immediately.
Do you believe she fabricated Megan's email?[1]
[1] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364735446331392
Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google
#625Here's why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation. They hired Gebru as a professional thorn in their side. "Come up in here and be a pain in the ass! Tell us what we're doing wrong!", they said. "We're Enlightened Corporate America, after all!" She is a chess piece in the game of Wokeness Street Cred. She then proceeded to do the job she was hired for, and now they're all "Hey lady, Here At Google…
Agreed; but this isn't just a Google problem. Seems to me like a lot of SF (and SF-inspired) "big tech" wants to be known for their "wokeness"[1], which leads to hires like Timnit and other "politically-outspoken" people, which in turn leads to situations like this, James Damore, and other individuals/situations that amount to workplace political activism. I am wholly uncomfortable with any discussion of politics in…
>Seems to me like a lot of SF (and SF-inspired) "big tech" wants to be known for their "wokeness"
It's just a fashion. It would be so dead in 10-20 years as being a hippy was in 1985.
Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google
#626Here's why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation. They hired Gebru as a professional thorn in their side. "Come up in here and be a pain in the ass! Tell us what we're doing wrong!", they said. "We're Enlightened Corporate America, after all!" She is a chess piece in the game of Wokeness Street Cred. She then proceeded to do the job she was hired for, and now they're all "Hey lady, Here At Google…
> That said, as a manager, I would have "accepted her resignation" and/or fired her without hesitation.
Her manager, however, apparently would not have: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3469738016467233...
Something is seriously wrong, BTW, when a manager has to find out from their own ex-employee that that employee has been fired by the manager’s manager, who, while not informing the manager, has sent a message about it to the fired employee’s direct reports.
Irrespective of the merits of the firing itself.
Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google
#627Here's why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation. They hired Gebru as a professional thorn in their side. "Come up in here and be a pain in the ass! Tell us what we're doing wrong!", they said. "We're Enlightened Corporate America, after all!" She is a chess piece in the game of Wokeness Street Cred. She then proceeded to do the job she was hired for, and now they're all "Hey lady, Here At Google…
She had been doing that job for awhile. IMO the reason this particular paper got the treatment it did is subtle but simple, based on the following observations:
* Many jurisdictions impose strict controls on the use of racially biased methods (eg: redline laws like the fair housing act in the US).
* Different advertising companies have access to different targeting methods (eg facebook has your social graph, apple have your app use, google have your search history).
* Language models are a key technology for google to maintain advertising relevance & thus keep adwords competitive
"Models trained on modern language reflect societal biases" may seem like an obvious fact, but once google says it publicly they no longer have a basis to deny it in court.
Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
So as I recall, you're right that she didn't encourage people explicitly, but she kept retweeting other supporters attacking LeCun, whereas LeCun kept telling his supporters to not attack her, and talked very positively of her. I agree my phrasing is muddying the waters, I should have been more precise. On another note, it's interesting to me that I keep seeing the LeCun debate come up here again and again as an exam…
I think twitter is a better representation of the actual ML community than HN. Yes, her reputation suffered amongst a group predisposed to consider her area of research to be something between not real and propaganda (both sentiments I've seen expressed and upvoted!).
It's possible, I'm not on twitter so don't really know how it played out there. I agree there's definitely a large population on HN with simplistic and reactionary political inclinations[1] that's predisposed to dislike her. I guess I'm going off the fact that I myself was put off by the way she argued, and I consider myself more progressive then the median HN-er.
[1] The fact that you're getting downvoted without explanation (at this particular moment) is a good example of that to be honest. Your responses are just providing further context and understanding about the issue, there's no reason it should be downvoted other then the fact that people don't like that you're supporting Gebru.
Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google
#629Here's why I have absolutely no sympathy for Google in this situation. They hired Gebru as a professional thorn in their side. "Come up in here and be a pain in the ass! Tell us what we're doing wrong!", they said. "We're Enlightened Corporate America, after all!" She is a chess piece in the game of Wokeness Street Cred. She then proceeded to do the job she was hired for, and now they're all "Hey lady, Here At Google…
I mean she did not HAVE to make an ultimatum. Real change takes hard work and time, and patience, and also playing politics with powerful people you dont like. Sounds like she basically made a one sided hit piece which was against the work some teams of brain, and took the "my way or the highway" approach. That wasn't so smart from her either...
Playing politics can take many different ways, and creating a scandal to draw attention can also be very efficient.
Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
One potential implementation: at the top of each thread, after the metadata for the thread itself and before the comment box, are a list of ‘Related discussions’ with a bulletpoint list of related HN threads.
Unfortunately, PG is of the opinion that he "finished" HN over a decade ago, which is why we don't get any iteration on the feature set here, no matter how useful it might be. I agree that this would be a good addition but I don't see it happening with this mindset. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18183822
pg is referring there to October 2006, which is when HN was released (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1), so he must have meant that he'd "finished" it enough to release it. It can't mean "finished" the way you're interpreting it, because he continued working on HN code for years after that. Indeed, he added a major new feature (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304) a few days before he left HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493856).
As someone who's worked on HN code since then, I can tell you there's no such "mindset", nor is it true that "we don't get any iteration on the feature set here" (11 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25197418). It is true, though, that most of the changes are subtle enough not to be so visible, including the ones I'm working on this evening. Most of the effort goes into attempting to improve, or at least preserve, the quality of submissions and comments.