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Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

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Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#91

Post by nullifidian »

atsjie wrote: post #71
fatbird wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the academic standard for research, and the original motivation for tenure, allows for researchers to criticize anyone, including their own institution, as long as it's done and presented as the proper product of research. In other words, if a researcher is doing their research properly, it shouldn't matter if they're attacking their own institution or even colleagues, because it passes scientific muster and…

"Timnit Gebru: Google and big tech are 'institutionally racist'" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55281862 It's good to be critical and reflect on the company you're working for. There are bad cultures and attitudes in any big company, not just tech. But if you're going to sprout your opinions publically about your (ex)-employer like that, sorry, but I wouldn't want her in my team. She sounds like too much of a he…

>Her work must be truly extraordinary

I'm pretty sure her work as an ethicist can be summarized as "Any application of AI/ML must be stopped until it is absolutely GUARANTEED that there won't be anything that could be deemed discriminatory by proponents of critical race/gender theory." Which is obviously an untenable position for a tech company.

I think she will be happy when we develop natural language understanding to the degree where we could implement an automatic critical theory censor, that would check for undesirable biases.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#92

Post by crusso »

fabian2k wrote: post #82
tomcam wrote: post #24

I have contempt for a lot of the things that Google does, but I have a sincere question about all of this. Why should they employ anyone who criticizes them that way in public? I would say the same about Peter Norvig or Guido van Rossum. If you ran the company, or the department, or owned your own firm where employees aired your dirty laundry like this, why should you be expected to keep them on?

Because this particular job does require a certain independence to do it properly. If business concerns would override and silence the Ethical AI team, then you might as well not have one in the first place. It would be purely a PR thing, which it well might have been after all. Having someone that is known to speak their mind in such a team does lend it more credibility. But you also can't complain if they then spea…

Because this particular job does require a certain independence to do it properly

Does it also require a certain intellectual integrity to do properly?

Because claiming that you were "immediately fired" online, then later having to "clarify" that you actually submitted your resignation because some demands weren't met sounds pretty dishonest to me.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#94

Post by GVIrish »

ergocoder wrote: post #58
mooneater wrote: post #37

> accepted her resignation immediately In saying "resignation", CNN is presenting the management framing -- as many people have pointed out, she was fired. Bloomberg states both sides of that: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/google-ai... As does The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158501/timnit-gebru-tea...

I have no idea why this matters. Timnit gave an ultimatum (i.e. do this or I'll leave). Google agreed to her condition of parting way. This is like I go to my boss and ask for a $1 billion dollars. Otherwise, I'll leave. Then, my boss decides that I should leave since the boss can't give me $1b. Then, I keep telling my friends that "well, I'm actually fired.". huh?

She gave a set of conditions and stated that if they couldn't be met, that she would work with Google to schedule a resignation date. Google then cut off her corporate access and terminated her employment immediately, ergo, firing.

If someone says, do this or I'll jump, and the other person pushes them, that's not the same thing as the person taking the leap on their own. The result might be the same, but the way the result was reached was different.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#95

Post by tw04 »

tomcam wrote: post #24

I have contempt for a lot of the things that Google does, but I have a sincere question about all of this. Why should they employ anyone who criticizes them that way in public? I would say the same about Peter Norvig or Guido van Rossum. If you ran the company, or the department, or owned your own firm where employees aired your dirty laundry like this, why should you be expected to keep them on?

Because the entire reason for hiring someone like this is to find issues with what you're doing and stop them. The entire position is a pre-emptive move to stop government from stepping in to regulate the company. If you fire the person the second they talk about something they feel you're doing wrong, it kind of defeats the entire purpose (IMO).

You literally hired this person to the e-brake on your AI program and then fire them when they tell you it's time to stop.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with this particular firing, but there's a very good reason for the company to employ someone who publicly disagrees with the way a particular department is being run or a decision they've made.

Candidly: this would be another example of why unions exist. Just because you publicly disagree with the company doesn't mean they should have carte blanche to fire you.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#96

Post by GVIrish »

oh_sigh wrote: post #15
pseudalopex wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In a message sent to Pichai and others that linked to the letter, Alex Hanna, a senior research scientist on the Ethical AI team, said it was sent on behalf of her team. A source familiar with the team said it includes roughly a dozen members."

12/200000 = .006%, so I guess I over-estimated how many people signed.

That's a strange way of looking at things. The other 199988 employees aren't on her team. If they had circulated their letter widely and then only got 12 signees then we could say only 6 thousandths of a percent supported the letter.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#97

Post by nabla9 »

jmeister wrote: post #48

They should hire Pedro Domingos to clean house and rebuild the group. This talk by him on AI ethics has a lot of maturity and insight on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yIRL4xtmXE4

Pedro Domingos has the same childish mentality as the worst people he attacks.

Petro is "Twitter trash".

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#98

Post by helen___keller »

ur-whale wrote: post #36

When you purposefully hire a whole group activists, be not surprised when they actually do activism.

This, basically. Ethics is, at times, incompatible with capitalism, so conflicts like these are essentially inevitable. Would anybody expect it to end well if Google hired Richard Stallman to the Free Software Ethics team? Of course not, he would be appalled by the decisions Google has made in the name of earning money, and every single publication coming from him would be a PR nightmare.

In all honesty, the most reasonable way to do corporate ethics is to give funding to external nonprofit organizations whose mission is the actual ethics, and then separately turn that organization's work into actionable KPIs for your engineers - if ethics org says "we need racial parity in facial detection", then you make that a KPI for your team of non-ethicist engineers and hopefully your organization becomes more ethical in the process without an endless deluge of PR nightmares.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#99

Post by pontus »

My god, people need to calm down. I understand that some may be upset about things their employer does and that's well within their rights. If their employer is knowingly engaging in illegal activity then by all means, be a whistle blower and set ultimatums, but this has gone too far. If you have a problem with the motivations of your employer or how it handles various sensitive issues then start preparing for interviews and leave the company! I find it sort of humorous how there are companies out there that are actually doing some pretty bad stuff that somehow don't have these problems. For example, I don't hear a lot about the walkouts at Exxon or at Raytheon.

For fun reading, here are the companies that the Norwegian wealth fund refuses to invest in because of ethical concerns (they recently removed Raytheon from this list when they exited the business of cluster bombs): https://www.nbim.no/en/the-fund/responsible-investment/exclu...

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#100

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

tomcam wrote: post #63
fatbird wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the academic standard for research, and the original motivation for tenure, allows for researchers to criticize anyone, including their own institution, as long as it's done and presented as the proper product of research. In other words, if a researcher is doing their research properly, it shouldn't matter if they're attacking their own institution or even colleagues, because it passes scientific muster and…

You’re 100% right. A job at a FAANG company isn’t a tenured position. Let her go get a job at Harvard and trash them all she wants.

We praise whistleblowers left and right on HN, at the expense of objectivity (assange, snowden, et al), despite ethical issues with them. Yet when a woman of color does it, "oh they are their own company and can do what they want and it's her fault for trying to be ethical in this space in industry." What??

Had a white male done this, it's hard not to think he'd be praised as a hero on here.

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